The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

“Stop stepping on me, George—good Lord, why can’t you dance?”

  “I don’t know—it’s a puzzle,” he said. “I do keep trying, though. I’ve noticed that ladies seem to reserve their greatest contempt for men who won’t even try to dance. So I try.”

  “I don’t like Mr. Crockett,” Tasmin said. “It seemed to annoy him that I questioned his decision regarding my own father. Every time I ask a man a question I’m greeted with annoyance, if not worse. I don’t see why that should be.”

  “I can’t deal with these philosophical questions when I’m doing my best not to step on your feet,” George said.

  Later, dancing with a young soldier who didn’t step on her feet but who didn’t utter a word during the dance, either, Tasmin found herself thinking of Jim. She tried to imagine him dancing and couldn’t. The surroundings were hardly fancy, just a half formed army base near the Brazos River, and yet Tasmin could not picture her husband joining in even such a primitive soiree—much less some grander ball in Washington or London, or even Saint Louis. It was a perplexing dilemma. Jim had the skills that enabled him to pursue killers in a wilderness, and yet, she considered, how much easier it would be for her to be happy with him if he could just dance with her at a party—only something as normal as that.

  “If we ever get anywhere where there’s a dance instructor I mean to insist that you take dancing lessons, George,” she told her friend.

  “I could try, if you insist,” George said. “But it won’t do any good. The flaw is within.”

  The next day in midmorning Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and Lord Albany Berrybender set off for San Antonio. Lord B. was in the best of spirits. It was decided that, once General Houston routed Santa Anna, the Berrybenders would proceed on toward Galveston and look into the possibility of getting a ship.

  “I’ll catch up with you, never fear,” Lord Berry-bender assured them. “I just want a whiff of battle one more time—takes me back to the great days of the duke.”

  “What do you think about this, Vicky?” Tasmin wanted to know.

  Vicky had received so much attention from young soldiers at the dance that she had become a little flustered, fearful that she might have exposed too much bosom.

  Nonetheless she was not happy to see Lord Berrybender drive away.

  “Impossible as he is to live with, I still wish he hadn’t gone,” Vicky said.

  “I feel the same,” Tasmin told her.

  59

  . . . signs of settlement began to appear . . .

  WHEN SIGNS OF SETTLEMENT began to appear—a farm here and there, some already abandoned—Jim reckoned that the worst of the danger was over. They were on the Brazos. One grizzled farmer met them with rifle in hand, offered no food, but did tell them where they needed to go.

  “You’re on the right river,” he said. “Another week and you’ll come to Mr. Austin’s colony. I expect your people are there—they came by a week ago.”

  Jim was heartened by that news. Tom Fitzpatrick had brought them through. He himself still felt his strange fatigue. He led the party, but Rosa did most of the work, making the campfires, cooking, keeping the captives in order. One wintry day she went off with Lord Berrybender’s rifle and came back with two wild turkeys.

  As they drew nearer and nearer to the settlements Jim realized he would soon have different problems to consider. He had rescued eleven people, including Rosa. They were all Mexican, their clothes were rags, they had not a cent, although Rosa had collected what money she could find on the slavers.

  What was he to do with them? More particularly, what was he to do with Rosa? He had become so needful of her that he couldn’t imagine being without her. Somehow her presence was comforting to him, easing, as no other woman’s had ever been. The best times of the day were at night when all the chores were done and they just sat by the campfire. They spoke scarcely at all in those times; and yet her presence was a deep comfort. He did not want to lose her; but she had been kidnapped: she might want to go home. The others, perhaps, could find employment of some sort in the Texas settlements. Even if they succeeded in getting back to their homes, the raiders might take them again.

  Jim found it hard to reconcile his need for Rosa with the fact that he had a wife and daughter not many days ahead. What could he do? What would Tasmin want? What would Rosa want?

  Rosa knew that Jem, as she called him, was troubled. He had told her that he had a wife and daughter. He had made no move to use her, as the slavers had used her. She herself felt sad—what could she do, when Jem returned to his family? Her home was far—even if she could find it, it was no place she wanted to be. Her husband’s wicked old mother blamed her for his death. His sisters hated her. Vaqueros she didn’t want were pressing her to go with them. She had to fight them, and some of them were strong. If she went home she would finally have to accept one of them, or she would starve.

  Rosa had come to be fond of Jem—but since he already had a wife he wouldn’t want to stay with her. Besides, she had been dishonored. How could she be a wife to a good man after the stains she bore? She even worried that Jim might have witnessed her shame. He had a spyglass. He might have seen her when Tay-ha led her out. She didn’t want to ask him.

  Jim, in his years with Tasmin, had rarely been able to figure out what she was feeling, except when she was angry. But now he had a sense that he did know what Rosa felt. When she sat by the campfire at night she wore a look of quiet sadness, as if she felt that her prospects were very bad. She did not want to look beyond the chores of the day. She would be happy to serve Jem, be a servant in his household, but probably his wife would not want such a thing.

  Jim knew he was not a good talker, when it came to explaining things; and yet he had become so dependent on Rosa’s company that he felt that he had better try. He didn’t like the sad looks he saw on Rosa’s face. Also, he didn’t believe he could ever be at ease with Tasmin, in the way that he was with Rosa.

  Besides, the Berrybenders were tending homeward. He didn’t want to go to England and he doubted Tasmin intended to stay in America. The two boys’ deaths had cut her too deeply. He didn’t know how it would all work out but he knew he did not want to lose Rosa. He wanted to keep Rosa. One night he looked up and told her so in the simplest words he could find.

  “I don’t want to send you home,” he told her. “I want you to stay with me and go where I go.”

  Rosa was shocked. What was Jem thinking? He had a wife. Was he asking her to stay with him as his whore? Her face showed her disappointment.

  “It’s not what you’re thinking,” Jim told her. “I guess my wife and I will be parting. She’s going to England and I can’t. She won’t be my wife always.”

  Rosa was too startled to respond at once. She had not let herself hope that Jem might want her as his woman, but that seemed to be what he did want. And yet it didn’t seem credible. Why would he want to leave a rich woman for a poor Mexican who had been misused?

  “I am . . . surprised,” she told him. “You are no longer to be with your wife?”

  Jim shook his head. “You saved me when you grabbed that bridle,” he told her. “Otherwise I would have killed all these people.”

  “Yes, I did that—but it’s past,” she told him. “You are not killing anybody now. I expect your wife is a good wife. Why would you leave her for a poor woman like me?”

  “I’m better with you than I am with Tasmin,” he said.

  Beyond that he couldn’t explain.

  Rosa waited, but he said no more. Yet she thought she must make him be clear.

  “Jem, are you asking me to be your woman?” she asked, watching him closely as she said it.

  Jim nodded. “And you mean to send away your wife?”

  He nodded again.

  Rosa said no more. Jim waited, nervously. He wanted an answer, but Rosa didn’t immediately give him one.

  “Will you, then?” he asked. “I don’t know,” Rosa said quietly. “I am glad that you want this, but I don�
��t know.”

  “When will you know?” he asked.

  Rosa took his hand and squeezed it, to show that she was not being hard.

  “When I’ve met this wife you want to send away—then I’ll know,” she said.

  60

  Davy Crockett, sober and somber . . .

  YOU KNOW, CROCKETT, it’s rather odd,” Lord Berry-bender said. “I started my military career attempting to shoot small brown men through the dust and the smoke, and here I am at the end of my military career, still attempting to shoot small brown men through the dust and the smoke. There’s a certain symmetry to it, wouldn’t you say?”

  Davy Crockett, sober and somber, mainly wished the old lord would stop talking. The siege of the Alamo had lasted almost two weeks, and the mood inside the old mission was not optimistic. Inside the walls of the mission’s courtyard Mexican bodies were piled in heaps; and yet there seemed to be an endless supply of soldiers, ready to fling themselves at the Texans as Santa Anna commanded. Jim Bowie was sick, they were almost out of ammunition, and yet old Albany Berrybender went on babbling endlessly about battles he had fought in Portugal and Spain. Probably half of what he said were lies, Crockett thought; but then perhaps the old fellow was wise to relive old battles: it might distract him from the fact that he was likely to die in this one, a fact for which Davy Crockett knew he bore some responsibility.

  “I fear I rather misled you, Albany—I supposed this would be mainly a lark,” he admitted. “I would never have supposed General Santa Anna would have come at our little company in such force— not when he has Sam Houston waiting for him on the plain of San Jacinto.”

  James Bowie, very weak from typhus, sat up on his cot and began to sharpen his knife—the big knife with the handle guard that he had designed himself.

  “Why, Crockett, this is just a warm-up,” he said. “Santa Anna thought he’d get an easy victory—probably wanted to get his soldiers’ blood up. I doubt the man supposed we’d be this tough.”

  Around the shadowy interior of the old church, Texans were grimly counting bullets. William Travis, their leader, spent his day at a little lookout post, with his spyglass. What he was looking for was some slight sign that Santa Anna might be tiring of the siege. He knew he could overrun the Texans eventually, but on the other hand, the cost in men was not small—Travis had no time to count bodies but he supposed the Mexican casualties must be approaching a thousand men. The Texans had most of them lived by the rifle—they could shoot, and they had, day after day, for almost two weeks. A wise general would not sacrifice a thousand men to overrun a force of less than two hundred; and yet generals were not always wise, and the men were being sacrificed. The wisdom of generals was a topic Lord Berrybender was happy to expound upon, on chill evenings, in the old church.

  “Napoleon—brilliant of course, but hardly wise,” he said. “Got cocky after Austerlitz and let the Russians suck him in. I suppose that’s what we’ve done with General Santa Anna. We’ve sucked him in and your General Houston can mop him up.”

  “Rather rough on us, of course,” Lord B. added. “Fortunes of war and all. Luck bound to run out sometime.”

  The last remark set Davy Crockett grumbling. “Speak for yourself, Albany,” Crockett said. “I’m not ready to have my luck run out. I didn’t come to Texas to die—always rather fancied dying in a brothel, if you must know.”

  “An original choice, certainly,” Lord Berry-bender replied. “I expect we could find a few whores around here, if only the Mexicans would give us a pass. Easy enough to get passes at such times in Europe—officers’ honor and all that, but it doesn’t seem to have caught on here.”

  “Nope, they mean to have our gizzards, and no entertainment allowed,” Jim Bowie remarked.

  “If we’re to be slaughtered I hope it happens before the brandy runs out,” Lord Berrybender remarked. “I have rather an enviable reputation as a drinking man. I’d hate to be sober when I draw my last breath.”

  Davy Crockett didn’t like the cheerful tone in which Lord Berrybender spoke of the likelihood that they would all be killed. It might be true enough, but why talk about it? The thing to do was keep one’s focus on life.

  “Well, America’s a grand place—my only regret is that I never got to shoot a grizzly bear,” Lord Berrybender said. There was every sign that another charge was coming. The Texans had repulsed many, perhaps they would repulse this one—and yet, perhaps not.

  “Deplorable uniforms!” he yelled, when the Texans’ guns had all but fallen silent—the brown men, at last, began to pour in.

  “I’d speak to somebody about those uniforms— they make you look like clowns!” he yelled to the fellow who was rushing at him with the shining bayonet. Jim Bowie, he saw, was up and whirling like a dervish, jabbing and striking with his big knife.

  Lord Berrybender just managed to parry the bayonet with his rifle, but another soldier came rushing just as fast and this time the blade went into his chest with a thunck, as if someone had stabbed a big ripe melon. Very surprising it was, that melon-struck sound. He thought he must remember to mention it to Vicky; but then, as he sank down, he realized that he would not be mentioning much else to his Vicky—how he had always liked that long, slim body of hers. The soldier in the clown uniform was trying to pull the bayonet out of his chest, but the bayonet seemed to be stuck. It was all more surprising than painful. He remembered the look on Señor Yanez’s face when the Pawnee boy ran at him and stuck the lance deep into him. Surprised was how the small gun-smith had looked: perhaps that was how he looked at the moment—surprised. Then the boy did jerk the bayonet out and Lord Berrybender sank to his knees. All around him men were struggling, but he himself felt rather like stretching out. Time for a nap, gentlemen, he thought—time for a nap.

  61

  . . . dark rumors began to reach them . . .

  THE AUSTIN COLONY was all in a turmoil, would-be soldiers arriving almost hourly to fight for the Texas Republic—volunteers departed at an equal rate, hoping not to miss the glorious fight, though uncertain as yet which battle offered the best chance for glory. Petal and Elf particularly enjoyed the confusion. Both were popular with the soldiers—they were given frequent horse rides by men homesick for their own children. George Catlin was impatient—he wanted to press on to Galveston and see what boats were going where, but Tasmin and Vicky were reluctant to leave without their husbands. Vicky expected to see Lord Berrybender come up the road from San Antonio any day.

  Then dark rumors began to reach them—the Texans were said to be besieged in something called the Alamo; the Mexican army was said to have an overwhelming advantage. And yet the news was all vague. It was reported that William Travis had drawn a line in the sand with his sword, with all those prepared to die for Texas independence on one side of it while those on the other side, who didn’t care to commit themselves, were free to leave. Some said Jim Bowie was with the stalwarts, some said Crockett was with him, but no mention was made of Lord Albany Berrybender at all.

  Vicky Berrybender became deeply apprehensive—her husband, after all, was notably reckless. When Mr. Austin, even more grave than usual, came to deliver the sad news—not only Lord Berrybender but nearly two hundred defenders of the Alamo all dead—Vicky was not really surprised. What surprised Lord Berrybender’s daughters was the depth of Vicky’s grief. She not only sobbed, she screamed so loudly that her frightened son, Talley, ran to Buffum for reassurance. Tasmin could do nothing with Vicky, nor could Father Geoffrin or anyone else.

  “What do you suppose she would do if Father had ever been nice to her?” Tasmin asked.

  “Perhaps there was something about him that we missed,” Buffum suggested. “After all, Mama had all of us by him.”

  “The ability to get women with child is a very common one,” Tasmin remarked. “It’s useful insofar as it keeps the race going, although whether that is a good thing might be debated.”

  “Is debated—that’s what philosophy is all about,” Geoff
told her.

  “Drat you, I don’t care about philosophy!” Tasmin told him. “That old brute, my father, has now left us stranded in a place we have no reason to be. I’m his daughter. I wish I could feel something positive, but I can’t. His life was one long selfish folly, and we’re the victims of it.”

  “That’s harsh, Tassie,” Mary said. “Speak no ill of the dead.”

  “An absurd sentiment,” Tasmin answered. “I cannot subscribe to it.”

  In fact she felt bitterness, not grief, when she thought of her father. The roll call of those who had died because of his selfishness—which included three of his grandchildren—would not be short, once it was tallied up.

  “Almost two hundred heroes died at the Alamo,” Mr. Austin intoned, in his sententious way.

  “If you’re counting our father, make it one hundred ninety-nine,” Tasmin said, not caring if the comment shocked her sisters. “I’m sure he shot plenty of little Mexican soldiers before he died—children most of them, like our Corporal Dominguin.”

  Mr. Austin was deeply offended. “Hardly a patriotic view, under the circumstances,” he said, frowning.

  “Not meant to be patriotic—but not unfair, either,” she retorted. “What could you know about the trail of dead we’ve left behind us?”

  “I merely meant that it would be an inconvenient thing to say just now, when everyone is hot to kill Mexicans,” he said, shocked by the English-woman’s temerity.

  “Not everyone is hot to kill Mexicans—it’s just you intemperate Texans,” Tasmin told him, where upon Stephen F. Austin turned on his heel and went away.

  Geoff, George, and Tasmin’s sisters all seemed stunned by what they had heard.

  “Well, am I expected to be polite to a fool like that?” Tasmin asked. “I suppose I ain’t polite enough for this fine new republic.”

  “I ain’t polite either,” the cheerful Petal said.