The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  “I regret that I left him so often,” Jim said to Father Geoffrin, when Monty died.

  “None of us are free of regret,” Father Geoff told him.

  Jim had not tried to stop Tasmin’s mad dash into the desert, but now he was worried.

  “I wish you’d go find her,” Jim asked the priest. “There’s Indians around—I wouldn’t want them to catch her.”

  As he sat with his son’s body, he remembered what had been done to the Spanish girl.

  Lord Berrybender was weeping, stomping, occasionally crying out.

  “Oh, my poor Juppy—come all the way from Northamptonshire, only to die like this,” he exclaimed.

  Vicky stared at him with hatred. “I regret Juppy, but you might remember that your son Randy died too—a child you scarcely noticed.”

  Lord Berrybender merely shrugged. “I loathe you—you will never touch me again,” Vicky said. She picked up Talley and ran into the desert, in the direction that Tasmin had gone.

  It was near sunset. Father Geoffrin hurried on his errand. He didn’t like it. Cold sun shone on the stark mountains to the east. The landscape offered no welcome—it offered its sere implacability. Where was consolation to be found in such terrible country?

  Tasmin clutched her two babies tight. She supposed Monty would have died; she wanted to know but dreaded to ask. She looked at Geoff, who nodded, sadly.

  “What about Jim?” she asked. “He’s not dead. He wanted to stay with Monty. He thinks the village well is tainted.”

  He spoke mainly to fill the terrible silence. “Is Monty gone’d?” Petal asked, nervously. “I don’t see Randy—is he gone’d?”

  She knew something had gone terribly wrong, but none of the adults would talk to her.

  “You remember that tosh about love we were talking only last week?” Tasmin asked. “That talk about love. I will never forgive myself for being so frivolous.”

  Father Geoff had no wisdom to offer. The tragedy that had befallen them was beyond any words to correct. What were words, set against the deaths of young and old? And yet silence before the facts was terrible too.

  “In casual times there’s no harm in talk about love,” he said.

  “It will never amuse me again,” Tasmin avowed. Father Geoff didn’t try to speak against her despair, or Vicky’s.

  “Children so often die,” he said. “All three of my brothers died within a year. I suspect that’s why I became so odd.”

  It was true, of course—Tasmin knew. Many children died in the Berrybender nurseries. Cousins died—the children of the servants died. Master Stiles, her first lover, lost a beloved young daughter. Her own aunt Clarissa had lost no less than six children. What Tasmin, in the freshness of her grief, could not fathom was how Aunt Clarissa regained enough interest to keep making more babies. Tasmin certainly did not expect to regain it.

  “Please, can we go back to the camp—Jim is afraid there might be Indians,” Geoff asked.

  “They’re no worse than cholera, if they are around,” Tasmin said. She felt a deep reluctance to take her two living children back to the place of death. Vicky seemed to feel the same way.

  “Look where we are—nowhere!” she said. “That whole wretched village is dying. It seems impossible to go on.”

  “But we must! For the sake of the living,” Geoff pleaded.

  The surviving soldiers and one or two men from the village dug the graves. There was no wood for coffins—they sacrificed blankets to make shrouds. Finally everyone but Juppy was shrouded, not up to Cook’s standards, of course. Crosses were made and fixed rather unstably in rocks. Tasmin sobbed until she was dry. So did Buffum and Vicky. It seemed terrible to have to leave a dear child, a dear mate, in such a bleak place.

  “I hope to come back someday and get him,” Tasmin said to Jim. “I want him to be in a proper graveyard.”

  Petal could not understand it. She thought that Monty and Randy must only be playing hide-and-seek. They were playing too long; she wanted them to come out, be found. She refused to believe that they were, as she put it, gone’d. For the next few days she kept poking her head under blankets, looking for them. “I don’t think they’re really gone’d,” she repeated. The adults made no answer.

  The morning after the burial two more soldiers died.

  37

  The soldiers supposed they were all doomed . . .

  CHOLERA’S ON THE RIVER—we have to get off the river,” Jim told the company. Lord Berrybender had found a bottle of whiskey in Major Leon’s baggage and was very drunk—he was shunned by all. Tasmin and Vicky were prepared to smash his fine new guns—they both held Lord B. responsible for the deaths of their boys and they meant to take revenge, but Jim stopped them.

  “Best not spoil the guns—we might need ’em,” Jim pointed out.

  “Then I’ll smash him!” Vicky said, overcome by a terrible bitterness. She rushed at Lord Berrybender and began to punch him as hard as she could. Soon he was all bloodied. Vicky kicked and punched at him until she exhausted herself. Buffum merely stumbled along, rigid with grief—though she did help Little Onion get the babies fed.

  Jim determined to take the party east, over the low mountain range east of the river. He didn’t know the desert, didn’t trust himself in it. He wanted to get back to the plains—there should be buffalo. One thing that worried him was their lack of fighting men. High Shoulders, the best fighter after himself, was dead. Juppy was dead, and Am-boise; it left himself, Lord Berrybender, and Father Geoff. As things stood any sizable band of hostile Indians could finish them. With that problem in mind he decided to ask the six remaining soldiers to come with them. They had weapons—maybe they could shoot. The soldiers, exhausted by the grave digging, sat listlessly on their saddles.

  “You had better come with us,” Jim told them. “I doubt you could make it back to Santa Fe.”

  The soldiers supposed they were all doomed— they wished they had never decided to be soldiers.

  Corporal Dominguin, now nomimally their leader, brightened at Jim’s suggestion.

  “We will be happy to come with you, señor,” he said. “We were afraid you meant to abandon us.”

  Jim had to pull Tasmin away from Monty’s grave. “Let me stay,” she begged. “I’m useless now. Go on—save the twins.”

  She remembered how often Monty had seemed bewildered—in fact she was the part of his life that had bewildered him, kissing him one minute and ignoring him the next.

  “You have another wife, and a good one—can’t you just leave me?” she asked.

  Jim made no effort to talk to her. He put her in the wagon and pulled Buffum off High Shoulders’ grave.

  Vicky refused to ride with Lord Berrybender, or to help him in any way. He finally persuaded Cook to ride in the buggy with him, and take the reins.

  “Oh, Jimmy—I don’t know—I wish you’d leave me,” Tasmin cried.

  “Hush about that,” Jim said. For once, he thought he understood his wife. Whenever Monty’s face came to mind, which was often, he felt a plunging sadness. He knew there were many things he should have done differently but now would never have the chance to do.

  A blinding snowstorm struck as they were toiling up the low pass. Tasmin was almost glad of the pain of the cold.

  “We’re leaving a great many dead in Nuevo México,” Mary remarked, sighing. “If Piet had died I would have died. I could not live without him.”

  “To think so is a very great luxury, very wrong,” Buffum told her. “I thought the same myself but as you see I’m alive.”

  “Old Gorska killed himself, in despair for his son—I rather admired him for it,” Mary replied.

  “Shut up, all of you—you’re making it worse,” Tasmin told them.

  “No, Tassie—I have to talk—it’s the silence I can’t bear,” Buffum said.

  “We have our young to consider,” she added. “I know that, but please shut up,” Tasmin asked.

  “It’s too much snow,” Petal said
, popping out from under a blanket.

  Tasmin felt a moment of resentment. How had this noisy child survived the place that killed Monty? And wouldn’t this place—this West—finally kill them all?

  “You’re all young,” Father Geoffrin told them. “There will be other children.”

  Tasmin slapped him—she couldn’t help it. “We don’t want them, you fool,” Tasmin yelled. “We want the ones we lost. Monty! Randy!”

  “I was just . . . ,” Father Geoff said, and then gave it up.

  38

  In the morning Jim rode back to find her.

  NEITHER TASMIN NOR JIM COULD SLEEP. Petey dozed in Tasmin’s arms, Petal in Jim’s. Little Onion was walking Elf, crooning to him in her own tongue. Buffum continually threw small chips of wood into the fire.

  One of the young soldiers had a kind of tambourine—the soldiers sang songs around their own campfire. Everyone seemed to fear sleep, except Lord Berrybender, who was snoring loudly. They had bought three nanny goats in the village. Cook was milking one of them.

  “I forgot my cello,” Vicky said. “Come all this way with me, and I forgot it. I must just go back and fetch it.”

  Jim shook his head. “It’s the other side of the pass,” Jim reminded her. “There’s two feet of snow up there.”

  “But I must have my cello,” Vicky said, in a voice that was high and unnatural.

  “He’s right, Vicky—let it go,” Tasmin advised. She didn’t like the look in Vicky’s eyes.

  “There are plenty of cellos in this world,” Tasmin reminded her. “I personally will see that you have the finest in London, once we get back.”

  “It was the deaths—I forgot it—it’s been my cello for such a while.”

  “Please forget it, Vicky—please,” Buffum pled. “I think we should tie her,” Jim said to Tasmin, later.

  “No—I fear she’d go crazy.” “She is crazy—grief crazy,” Jim argued. “So am I, or very nearly,” Tasmin told him. “She’s worse,” Jim insisted. “And she’s got Talley to think of.”

  I’m thinking of Monty—I suspect you are too.”

  “I still think we ought to tie her—it’s for her own good,” Jim insisted.

  “Doing what one can to dull this pain is for one’s own good, Jim,” Tasmin argued.

  Despite Jim’s vigilance, Vicky escaped. In the morning Jim rode back to find her. Fortunately it had warmed a little—she had only managed to stumble half a mile. One foot was frostbitten but Cook and Father Geoffrin rubbed it vigorously with snow and concluded that it could be saved.

  “I’m only dubious about the little toe,” Geoff concluded.

  When the dawn mists cleared they looked down a long slope to the snowy prairies, almost covered with grazing buffalo.

  Lord Berrybender, to his fury, was not permitted a weapon. The old man was bent on revenge for the beating he had been given by his wife.

  “I fear he’ll shoot Vicky, if we allow him a gun,” Jim argued.

  Lord Berrybender, in tears, appealed to his eldest daughter.

  “But I’ve come all this way to hunt—and there’s the buffalo,” Lord B. insisted. “Why shouldn’t I hunt?”

  “You’ll have no gun today,” Tasmin assured him. “We’ve suffered grievous losses. Two children are dead. Do you think we care a fig for your hunting?”

  Lord B., infuriated, tried to slap Tasmin, who ducked and slapped him smartly hard.

  “We are none of us at our best today—indeed, we may never be at our best again,” she told him, fiercely. “But we are struggling to behave as civilized people. Your own behavior is disgraceful. Any more out of you and we’ll have the soldiers tie you to your buggy.”

  “Not a bit of it, you insolent bitch!” Lord Berry-bender shouted, enraged.

  “Spent thousands on this trip—I suppose I will hunt when I want to—and no more damned impudence from you!”

  He shoved Tasmin and hobbled to his gun cases. He tried to grab a rifle but Vicky seized the barrel and the two of them struggled in the snow. With a violent yank he managed to wrench the rifle from her and was just looking to his ammunition when Jim picked him up and flung him violently to the ground; then he dragged the old man to the buggy and pitched him into it. With help from Little Onion and Corporal Dominguin they soon had him tied in his seat. Lord Berrybender was frothing and spitting in his fury.

  “I’ll have every man jack of you lashed at the cart’s tail!” he yelled. “Don’t care if you are my own blood. Put you in the stocks! Pelted with offal!”

  “Maybe his mind’s slipping, Tassie,” Mary conjectured. “He’s like he was that day Bobbety shot his horse.”

  “We’ve just lost seven people,” Tasmin reminded her. “One was his son and two were his grandchildren—and yet he still wants to shoot.

  “I think most of us are not far from crazy at this juncture,” she went on. She meant it; she felt only just sane. It seemed to her she might just hang on to sanity if there was no more trouble, no more loss. But here they were again, facing a wintry plain—a plain that seemed endless. There would be more trouble and, very likely, more loss.

  Suddenly they were all startled by a wild ululation from Jim—furious at Lord Berrybender. The Word suddenly poured out, frightening the old lord so that his hair stood on end. Tasmin remembered the sounds of the Word from the day the Osage chased them; to everyone else it was a shock. Lord Berrybender thought his son-in-law must have gone mad. What did it mean?

  Petal was extremely startled, but not frightened. “Petey, listen at Jim,” she commanded, and Petey did listen, amazed.

  The whole camp fell silent until the Sin Killer finished his cry.

  “As I was mentioning, Mary, some of us are not far from crazy,” Tasmin said. Jim Snow gave her father a hard shaking before he turned away.

  “That’s only the third time I’ve heard you do that,” Tasmin said, when Jim, calming, came to her.

  “You missed Billy Williams—he’s the one who shot High Shoulders,” Jim told her. “I yelled him the Word, not long ago.”

  “Do it again,” Petal demanded. “I like it. Do it for me. It’s like a gobble bird.

  “Some people call them turkeys but I call them gobble birds,” Petal added.

  Despite her cheerful request, Jim did not do it again.

  39

  “It just comes out, when I see bad sinning,” Jim told his wife . . .

  IT JUST COMES OUT, when I see bad sinning,” Jim told his wife, trying to explain his crying of the Word.

  What he had done so startled the camp that, for a few minutes, they all forgot their grief. Soon enough sorrow edged back into their consciousness, but they looked at Jim differently. Petal was the only one in the company who tried to make him make the strange sounds on command—her command.

  “Be the Sin Killer,” she asked her father, but he wouldn’t obey.

  Lord Berrybender was so upset by what his sonin-law had just done that he got an attack of the shakes. He trembled so violently that Cook finally gave him a little whiskey, to calm him down.

  “I wish I knew exactly what you think the bad sins are,” Tasmin said. “I’m sure we’d all try not to do them if we just knew what they were.”

  Jim felt shaky himself. In his rage he had pulled his knife, just as he had with Billy Williams. It had been in him to cut Lord Berrybender’s throat—he had just managed to stop himself, and yet all Lord Berrybender had done was make himself a violent old nuisance.

  “I nearly killed your pa,” he said, to Tasmin. “I had the knife out. It’s lucky I stopped.”

  “I believe it made a profound impression on Papa,” Tasmin told him. “On all of us, for that matter.”

  For a second night they scarcely slept. Jim untied Lord Berrybender but didn’t speak to him. Lord B. looked pathetically at Vicky, hoping for a word of sympathy, but Vicky turned her back. Cook finally took pity on him. She had been His Lord-ship’s cook for many years; his flaws and faults were abundant, but still he
must be fed—though, as she worked, from time to time she found herself sobbing at the thought of dear Eliza and the little lost babies.

  “Where will we go now, Jimmy?” Tasmin asked. “Are there no towns anywhere? We’re all tired of this wilderness my father’s selfishness has brought us to.”

  Jim had been asking himself the same questions. There were Mexican towns to the west but they would all just be arrested again if he took them to a Mexican town. He knew there were settlements in south Texas—but he didn’t know the country and would have to feel his way along, hoping to strike one of the forks of the Brazos River, which he had been told led to the settlements. When he and Kit had come back along the Canadian River country after their trip to New Orleans, they had met numbers of immigrants, but none of them had any very reliable information to pass on. With luck, once they got east, they might chance on a party of immigrants and join up with with them as protection against the tribes.

  Tasmin could not remember Jim being as doubtful about how to proceed as he was at the moment. Always before, he had seemed to know exactly where he wanted to go—when decisions had to be made, he made them without hesitation. His sudden lack of certainty filled her with despair. They were caught in a nightmare—a nightmare that had no meaning. If they had come to a place where even Jim Snow felt daunted, then the future looked dark indeed.