The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  Talking to these men often made Kit feel as if he were traveling in circles. Wouldn’t it seem likely that the Ear Taker was just what his name implied: a man who takes ears?

  “Nobody knows who he is, but what he likes to do is cut off people’s ears,” he explained. “White men’s ears, mostly. He slips up on people while they’re sleeping and when they wake up they’re one-eared, like this fellow.”

  “I believe there’s a story here, Clam,” Ben remarked at once. “I believe I’d like to get my notebook and jot down a few particulars, if Mr. Carson will oblige us.”

  “Certainly there’s a story—what does this fellow look like?” Clam asked.

  “I don’t know and neither does anybody else,” Kit said. “Nobody’s even seen him. He works at night and he’s so quick with his slicing that he’s gone before the victim even wakes up.”

  “But why haven’t the authorities done something?” Clam asked. “Catch him, garrote him! Rid us of this menace!”

  “Who’s supposed to catch him? There are no authorities out here,” Kit reminded them. “He used to work around Santa Fe mostly, but I guess he’s moved.”

  “But that’s most disturbing,” Ben told him. “You don’t suppose he has designs on our ears, do you?”

  “Probably,” Kit allowed.

  “Then we will have to post a guard in future,” Ben told him.

  “Where would we get a guard?” Kit asked.

  Ben and Clam exchanged glances.

  “Well, there’s Amboise,” Ben suggested.

  “I can’t guard very well, sirs,” Amboise admitted. “Can’t seem to stay awake.”

  “If you nod off I expect the Ear Taker will just slip in and take your other ear,” Kit announced.

  The two Europeans weighed their prospects in silence, looking apprehensively at the long plain and the waving grass. Clam’s blood had begun to boil at the thought of this criminal threat. Nothing of the sort would be allowed if they were in France.

  “I’ll shoot him on sight,” he declared.

  “There won’t be a sight—he works in the dark,” Kit reminded them. “You won’t see him.”

  “What must we do, then, Mr. Carson?” Hope-Tipping asked. “I’m afraid neither Clam nor I can afford to lose an ear—we’re much in society, you know. It would not be acceptable in the chanceries, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, we can hurry up and join the Berrybenders,”

  Kit suggested. “Some of the mountain men are probably still with them—they’re pretty fair guards, if they ain’t drunk.”

  “We shall have to insist on sobriety, then—won’t we, Clam?” Hope-Tipping said. “If you’ll just excuse us while we make a bit of a toilette, we can be on our way.”

  “You better patch that balloon up, if you’ve got anything to patch it with,” Kit suggested. “It might come in pretty handy.”

  He had not given up on the notion of a dramatic entrance via balloon, once they located the company—Tasmin would be mighty impressed, if she looked up and saw him flying. The two journalists were thoroughly aggravating—it would serve them right if the Ear Taker got one of their ears—but that didn’t mean he was ready to give up on a flight in their fine balloon.

  22

  Tasmin, primed and ready . . .

  TASMIN, primed and ready, deeply in the mood to enjoy her new love, would cheerfully have spent all her time alone with Pomp Charbonneau; but thanks to the myriad vexations of travel, the Berrybender party had been proceeding east for more than a week and she had so far spent no time alone with Pomp at all, a situation that vexed her very much. With Jim Snow gone; Kit Carson gone; Lord Berrybender newly besotted with his bride, Venetia Kennet; Buffum Berrybender in constant shy attendance on her tall Ute; and William Ashley and Eulalie Bonneville, nominal leaders of the mountain men, departed for the north, it fell to Tasmin and Cook—herself the object of a circumspect courtship with Tom Fitzpatrick—to manage the day-today affairs of the expedition. Tasmin found herself saddled with so many duties that she would have had little time for love even if her lover had been assiduous in pursuit, which he wasn’t. This too vexed Tasmin extremely. She had given herself to the man and knew that he had been pleased; and yet, instead of coming back for more, Pomp rode off every morning with Jim Bridger to scout the day’s route, and sometimes did not return until after dark, by which time Tasmin had her child to feed and the camp to more or less administer. Of course, it would merely have been prudent to wait and come to Pomp well after dark, when they could have enjoyed one another in secret—but Pomp didn’t allow her even this. Often it was late when he returned—he usually just rolled up in a blanket and slept by the campfire with the other men.

  Tasmin, never one to be passively thwarted, would soon have developed her own strategies for seduction; she would have intercepted Pomp and cajoled him into making love had she herself not been ground down by the exigencies of camp life, which were constant and mostly negative.

  First Monty wandered into a bush and was stung nearly a dozen times by wasps. Despite Little Onion’s dexterity with poultices, the little boy ran a high fever; he sobbed fretfully whenever Tasmin left him. Then Coal’s little boy Rabbit, managed to bounce out of the wagon, which ran over his foot, causing him to add his wails to Monty’s. Were that not enough, Piet Van Wely while attempting to chip a fossil out of a rock, was bitten in the calf by a rattlesnake; while the babies whined, Piet groaned and sweated. Hugh Glass made a cut in the calf and sucked out most of the poison, but Piet languished for three days, a stricken Mary Berrybender in panicky attendance. Finally Little Onion made Piet a bitter concoction which purged him thoroughly, after which he soon recovered. Mary held the Dutchman’s sweaty head as she cooed to him. Intolerant of children at the best of times, she felt no compunction about kicking Monty or Talley or Rabbit if they crowded into Piet’s space.

  “These brats have all fouled themselves—I smell it!” she insisted. ‘And soon Buffum will be giving birth to a red brat who will do the same.”

  “Not too soon—she just got pregnant,” Tasmin replied. “You’re Monty’s aunt—you could take a hand in his upbringing, you know. It wouldn’t kill you to wipe a baby’s bottom.”

  Vicky Kennet, the new bride, seldom rode with them during the day—Lord B.’s besottedness had reached such a level that he required Vicky to accompany him on his daily hunts. Revived by the fine high air, His Lordship sometimes felt in the mood for a spot of copulation around lunchtime. He could not bear to be without the services of his bride.

  “Why is the pater so gross?” Mary asked, a question Tasmin made no attempt to answer. She was uncomfortably aware that, if she were allowed to indulge her natural inclinations, they might not be much less gross than her father’s. More than once Tasmin found herself wishing that Pomp would leave Jim Bridger with the company and take her on a scout. She could well have tolerated a spot of copulation around lunchtime herself.

  But no such notion occurred to Pomp, whose main concern, when he was in camp, seemed to be with his ailing father, who had been taken with the jaundice and was in consequence so wobbly on his feet that he too had to be allowed space in the wagon. Coal and Little Onion combined their skills and gathered herbs for yet more concoctions, which, though beneficial, did not cure the elder Charbonneau very quickly. After a long consultation with Pomp it was concluded that old Charbonneau would profit from sitting for a time in a sweat lodge, where the poisons could be sweated out of him. This required a half day’s break in the trekking—Tasmin hoped it might present her with an opportunity to get Pomp to herself for a bit. Old Hugh Glass not only helped build the sweat lodge but, once it was built, casually stripped off and insisted on participating.

  “I’ve a heap too much bile,” he announced. “When I lived with the Rees I was often refreshed by the sweats.” He at once crawled in with old Charbonneau.

  Unhappily for Tasmin they were stopped on an absolutely open plain, with no deep glades that might be suited for romant
ic interludes, which Pomp, to her fury, showed no sign of wanting anyway. He spent his time happily giving archery lessons to Jim Bridger, who desired to master the bow but, so far, was a long way from doing so.

  The night Tasmin seduced Pomp, Jim had not been mentioned—in fact Jim had never entered her thoughts. The moment was hers and Pomp’s; at the time she had hardly supposed it would be their only such moment, but now she was beginning to wonder. Was Pomp thinking of Jim—his friend, her husband? Was that what kept him away?

  When old Charbonneau and Hugh Glass emerged from the sweat lodge Mary Berrybender watched from the back of the wagon, where she was attending to her Piet.

  “How odd, Tassie,” she remarked. “Mr. Glass is very tall, yet his organ of generation is no longer than Piet’s. You would think it would be longer, since Piet himself is short.”

  “What are you talking about?” Tasmin asked. Her thoughts had been on Pomp—she had merely glanced at the two naked men.

  “You would think a man’s organ of generation would have some relation to his size, and yet it doesn’t seem to,” Mary said.

  “Don’t be so pompous—just call it a prick,” Tasmin advised. “I confess I take very little interest in this subject myself, and I can hardly see why a maiden such as yourself should be concerned with such matters.”

  Piet, still feverish, raised himself on an elbow and looked at the two old men.

  “We Dutch always manage to hold our own,” he muttered.

  Buffum, newly radiant, caught the drift of the discourse and smiled.

  “What are we talking about?” she asked, smiling.

  “The size of pricks, but I don’t want to hear you bragging about your Ute,” Tasmin said. “It’s obvious from your constant blushing that he’s not backward in the services of Venus. But the subject is on the whole a very tedious one.”

  “You’re just jealous,” Mary remarked, with a smirk. “You never expected Buffum and me to do better than you when it comes to lovers—and we have.”

  The fact that there was some truth in what her sister said left Tasmin feeling sullen, and not a little discouraged. Buffum had caught herself a very handsome boy and Mary had forged a companionable bond with her pudgy botanist—and what did she have to put against these conquests? A husband who was frequently gone and a lover who was hesitant, to put it politely. At least in Europe men were willing to do the seducing—had she not spent years fending off unwanted kisses, sudden lecheries and assaults? Yet here in America, women had to do most of the work of love. Jim Snow had soon come round, but only because she pressed him. She had done more than press Pomp and had expected a good deal more return for her effort than had so far been achieved. Now here were her sisters, preening themselves over their lovers, while she spent her days tending babies, driving wagons, and trying to keep her family and its ill-constituted retinue in reasonable marching order. Just when she felt capable of any wildness, there was no one who would even allow her to be wild with them. She was irritated with Jim for leaving and staying gone, angry with Pomp because, she suspected, he was either afraid of her or afraid of what he felt when he was with her. She was even annoyed with her personal whipping boy Kit Carson, who had casually drifted off just when she needed him most.

  “What is it, Tassie?” Mary asked, all alarmed at the look of anger she saw in Tasmin’s face.

  “I wish I was back in Europe, that’s what!” Tasmin said, with sudden vehemence.

  “But Europe’s very far away,” Mary reminded her. “I doubt we shall be returned there even within the year.”

  Tasmin doubted it too—and yet a sudden longing for London streets or green rural dales, with hedgerows and sheep, or mild cattle, was so overpowering that tears started in her eyes. The sight shocked both her sisters, and yet Tasmin couldn’t help it—a need for the familiar seized her. She jumped off the wagon and more or less pitched Monty to Buffum; both baby and aunt were shocked.

  “Here, get some practice, you’ll need it,” she said, and then went stumbling off, walking right past Hugh Glass and Toussaint Charbonneau, both of whom hastened to cover their nakedness. Tasmin, shaken by a homesickness the more powerful for being, in immediate terms, hopeless, just kept walking, heedless, into the empty prairies that lay between her and all that she desired: English order, English privilege, English intelligence , English lanes, even English clouds. The great prairie sky that had thrilled her so the first time she beheld it, on that first ecstatic moment on the banks of the Missouri, now seemed a brutal thing, a sky under which the worst barbarities were enacted—indeed, might yet be enacted on herself, her siblings, and her child unless they were lucky. She wanted to be again in a place where men saw themselves as lovers of women, rather than killers or trappers.

  Tasmin sobbed, dried her eyes, cried more, wet her cheeks, dried her cheeks, all the time walking farther and farther from camp. When no more tears came she slumped suddenly and sat down. It was only then that she noticed that she was completely alone in the seemingly endless world of grass. The camp was not in sight, and for a few minutes she was too tired to care. In the camp were many able trackers—someone would soon find her, though of course it was possible that hostiles might find her first. She remembered that her sister Buffum and their femme de chambre, Mademoiselle Pellenc—now married to a fur trader in Canada—had rushed off into the prairies in an effort to recover Prince Talleyrand, their mother’s old parrot, and had been caught and subjected to painful indignities before being ransomed.

  Perhaps she would be caught too, but if she couldn’t be back in England—a haven thousands of miles distant—she was not immediately sure that she particularly cared. The prairies seemed so empty, so desolate, that merely looking at them increased Tasmin’s deep homesickness; hopeless again, she put her head in her hands, feeling such darkness in her heart that she hardly knew what to do.

  Then Pomp was there, his approach, as usual, so quiet that she jumped when she opened her eyes and saw his legs.

  “Now where were you thinking of running off to?” he asked.

  “Why would you care?” she said, so angry that she was ready to bite, if challenged.

  “Because I saw some bear sign yesterday and it wasn’t Abby’s,” he told her. “It’s not safe to be running off when there’s grizzlies around.”

  “Perhaps not—on the other hand, I’m in the kind of mood that makes being eaten by a bear almost a welcome diversion,” she told him, unable to keep bitterness out of her voice.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve ever been in that sort of mood, have you, Pomp?” she asked, fixing him with a direct look.

  “Not me—the first thing my father and mother both warned me about was bears—I give bears all the room they want,” he said, more than a little confused by the antagonism he was getting from Tasmin.

  “It’s very natural that your parents would have warned you about the danger of bears,” she said. “What I wish is that they had taught you a bit more about the dangers of women.”

  Pomp shrugged.

  “Ma died when I was too little to need to know much,” he said. ‘And Pa’s only had Indian wives. He wouldn’t know what to say to a woman like you.”

  “Do you think there’s that much difference between an Indian woman and myself?” Tasmin asked him. “Mightn’t it be that at some level we want many of the same attentions?”

  “Don’t think so,” Pomp said. “Pa’s married to Coal now—I don’t think Coal’s like you.”

  “But she is, for those who have eyes to see,” Tasmin insisted. “I know Coal a little—I like her very much. And I would beg to argue that we’re more alike than you think.”

  Pomp didn’t reply—he was thinking.

  “Well, you both have babies,” he ventured.

  “That’s right—we both have babies, which occurred because we got men to desire us,” Tasmin said. “Coal wanted your father to want her—she persisted. I remember how happy she was when she conceived. She thought the swans were a fact
or—but desire was the main factor, and in exactly the same brute way, I want you to desire me. I thought you did, Pomp—but now I just don’t know. I love you—I confess it! I love you! What I don’t like is being in thrall to a man who doesn’t want me. It sours one, you know. I have a child to raise. I’d rather not be sour.”

  She reached up, took his hand, and pulled at him, meaning to lay him down as she had before, meaning to kiss him and make him want her. If she was going to have to do everything, then she would do everything! She was prepared to reach up and take him out of his pants, as she had done before, only then it had been in darkness. To grasp a man in daylight was a good deal bolder thing—and yet her hands were at his trousers, when she happened to glance up and noticed that Pomp was completely unaware of what she was about. Pomp was looking up into the sky, a very odd thing to do, in her opinion, when a woman was being as direct as she was being about her eagerness to make love. Even a near virgin, as Pomp was, must accept the fact of his own desire, once his desire was made manifest, a thing Tasmin felt sure she could accomplish.

  Then a shadow fell on them, caused, she supposed, by a small drifting cloud; but the startled look on Pomp’s face caused her to look higher, where, to her astonishment, she saw a balloon floating their way, a balloon, with three men in its basket, making a slow but steady descent toward the prairie.

  “Good Lord!” she exclaimed. “How did a balloon get way out here?”

  “I don’t know, but Kit’s in it,” Pomp said. “I don’t know who those other two gents are—but here comes a wagon too. Maybe there’s a circus traveling round.”

  “That’s nonsense—a circus?” Tasmin questioned. “Who would pay to see it?”

  Despite the shock of seeing a balloon descending near them, Tasmin’s first reaction was anger at Kit Carson. First he had left her without asking permission, just when she had stood in woeful need of him; then he remained absent for weeks; and now here he was, drifting down just in time to spoil her bold seduction attempt on Pomp Charbonneau. No man that she could think of had annoyed her in so many ways in such a short time.