Sin Killer

by Larry McMurtry

  “If you married Papa expecting fidelity, then you were a very great fool,” Tasmin told Vicky.

  But Vicky, larger now, was staring at Lord B. and his slim mistress. Hatred kept her rooted.

  “I must seem a cow beside her,” she remarked. Then she burst into tears and left the balcony.

  “Julietta won’t be slim either, if she lets Papa start giving her babies,” Tasmin said.

  Father Geoff did not seem interested. “I suppose life is inevitably coarsening,” Tasmin declared, poking him with her elbow to see if he might stir. “One’s choice is to be coarse or be dead. I’ll take coarse, myself.”

  “I miss Bobbety,” Father Geoff admitted suddenly. “It’s all very well to read poetry and novels, but it doesn’t compare to having a true friend.”

  “Ain’t I a true friend?” Tasmin asked. “Yes, but you’re strong—Bobbety wasn’t,” Geoff told her. “I was the person he turned to when he was sad. I admit I liked that.”

  Tasmin heard a squeal from the nursery—the squeal was coming from Petey, the softer of her twins. What if Petey, like Bobbety, grew up to be sad? The likelihood of Petey beating Petal at much of anything was remote—it made Tasmin love him the more. She went in to discover Petey in tears and Petal, the picture of innocence, playing with some blocks.

  “Did you hurt your brother?” Tasmin asked. “Petey had the blocks first and she knocked him down,” Monty reported. Petal looked at him sullenly—Monty never took her side.

  “Petey doesn’t know how to stack,” Petal said coolly. “He was going to make the blocks all fall down.”

  “That’s hardly a reason to knock him down,” Tasmin said. “Sharing is a virtue, you know.”

  “She never shares, and besides that she steals,” Monty said. “She stole my big marble.”

  Petal had in fact hidden the marble in one of her mother’s pouches—for good measure she shoved the pouch under her mother’s bed, where it would never be found.

  “Your father’s coming soon,” Tasmin told her. “We’ll see what he makes of this behavior.”

  With a sweep of her hand Petal knocked down the tower of blocks. This was not welcome news— Petal was not sure she liked her father.

  “His beard’s too scratchy,” Petal said. “I don’t want him to come.”

  “Then he’ll merely have that much more time with Monty and Petey, which I’m sure he’ll enjoy,” her mother told her.

  Petal, kicking out wildly, scattered the blocks all over the room.

  18

  . . . the bearded stranger was first brought into the nursery . . .

  THE TWINS HAD BEEN almost eight months old when Jim came to Santa Fe a second time. He had meant to be back sooner, but the trip east with the goods train was a trip where everything went wrong. The Bents had insisted that he use mules—faster than oxen—but the party had been repeatedly harassed by Indians and some of the mules were stolen. It was unusually wet; several more mules got foot rot. A drover was killed in an ambush. Jim was forced to go east and secure replacement mules before he could bring the goods to the river. Once delivery was complete, he hurried back as quickly as he could.

  On that visit, when the bearded stranger was first brought into the nursery, Petal, not yet speaking, set out to charm him, only to discover that he seemed to be more interested in Monty, who was ecstatic to see his father; Monty clung so tight that Petal had few openings. Also, it was on that visit that the really bad thing happened: her father and mother went into the bedroom together and the door was firmly locked. Petal’s efforts to push it open only made it rattle. When she cried out in protest, Little Onion, not her mother, came and carried her away to a place where she could not interfere with what was going on behind the door.

  Petey soon forgot the episode of the closed door, but Petal didn’t. The first rule of her life was that she must always come first with her mother. That a stranger with a beard should preempt this right was intolerable. Every time she found her mother’s door locked she kicked it and screeched with anger until Little Onion came and carried her away. For the rest of that visit Petal ignored her father completely. She wanted him to go away, so that things could be as before. But he didn’t go quickly—her mother’s door continued to be locked, a source of deep bitterness to Petal.

  In her months of grief Tasmin had feared that she might never want any man again, but this time, when Jim kissed her she did not put him off. She was soon a wife again. On the day before his next departure the bedroom door stayed locked all day. Petal, wiser, did not rattle it; but she listened: she heard scufflings, little cries. In time Tasmin developed suspicions. Holding a shawl in front of her, she got up and suddenly opened the door. Petal crawled away as fast as she could go. Tasmin, naked behind her shawl, did not pursue. She got back in bed and put her hand on her husband—she liked it that she could still make him hard with a touch. She had now borne three children—she felt that she must be aging rapidly, but Jim seemed not to want her less, which was reassuring. Yet their lovemaking didn’t lessen the complexity of life. The Berrybenders had been in Santa Fe for a year; Tasmin was for staying another year, for the sake of the babies—but Jim didn’t like the town, or any town. What would he do?

  “Guide for the Bents, I guess,” Jim said. “They never get enough. Now they’re wanting me and Kit to lay out a route to California. They think it’s the coming place.”

  Jim, she was reluctant to relinquish him to the prairies, even though she knew he would never tolerate city life for long.

  “Half a year, maybe more,” Jim said. “I’m not anxious to take Kit. He can’t travel ten yards without complaining.”

  “I wish I could go with you, but I’d be afraid for Petey—he’s not strong,” she said. “How quickly children alter the way of things.”

  Jim was a little surprised that Tasmin wanted to come—but then she had never shied from adventure. But he judged the situation too uncertain, the water scarce, the Indians most likely hostile. With three young children it made no sense to take her.

  Then his eye caught a movement—the little girl had crept back to the doorway. As soon as she saw that her father had seen her, she scuttled away again. After that she ceased to have anything to do with Jim. He was a serious interloper. A man that caused her mother to lock her out was bad.

  One day Kit showed up—were they going to California, or not? To Kit’s shock Tasmin flew into him as violently as she had the day he descended into camp in the hot-air balloon.

  “Don’t you rush us, Kit Carson!” she raged. “If the Bents are in such a hurry, let them go themselves.”

  Kit wondered why, in Tasmin’s eyes, he could never do anything right. All he was asking was that Jim make up his mind.

  That night Tasmin and Jim visited the nursery— all the children were asleep. Seeing them sleeping, the two little boys and the little girl, Jim had an odd feeling, half proud, half sad. Tasmin clung to his arm—she felt distressed.

  “It’s no more dangerous to try for California than it is on the Santa Fe Trail,” Jim reminded her.

  “Jimmy, just don’t talk about danger anymore,” Tasmin pled. “I was there when the Utes came, and the Pawnees. I drank that awful froth from the horse’s belly. I can imagine the dangers all too well.

  “Just come back,” she added, grimly. “Just see that you come back.”

  Jim felt so much tension that night that he got up and began to get his few things together. Thinking about going was too miserable. Better just to go. But Tasmin wouldn’t have it.

  “I’ll just have you one more night, thank you,” she said. But tension even overrode passion. Neither could sleep. Both lay awake, staring. Tasmin contented herself with a few timid kisses.

  “This is awful, you’re right, go,” she finally said, just before dawn.

  When Petal woke up she immediately crawled to her mother’s room—to her delight the door was wide open and the bearded stranger gone. The old order was restored. Petal went back to the nu
rsery and began to hide some of Petey’s toys.

  19

  . . . there he was again, kissing her mother . . .

  PETAL HAD ALMOST FORGOTTEN the bearded stranger when she came round the corner and there he was again, kissing her mother, who clung to him happily. It shocked Petal so that she walked into the nursery and pressed her face into a corner—her new way of showing extreme displeasure. When people refused to do what she wanted them to she hid her face in a corner until Monty or some big person pulled her out and offered compromise. The only person who didn’t seem to care when Petal removed herself to her corner was her mother, who proposed no compromises.

  “You can stand there a week, if you want to be stubborn,” Tasmin said. “Why should one care?”

  Jim thought Petal the very image of Tasmin, with high similarity of disposition too. She looked daggers at him when he tried to play with her a little: it was the same look Tasmin gave him, when she was angry. He not only had a forceful wife, he now had a forceful daughter too.

  After enduring another day in which her mother’s door was firmly locked, much of which she spent with her face pressed bitterly in a corner, Petal decided to take her concerns directly to the intruder—the man had gained a power over her mother that was not acceptable.

  The next day, catching her father alone, she made a blunt demand.

  “You go away from here,” she said. “And you go quick.”

  Jim was amused. The child’s tone of voice was exactly like Tasmin’s, if she happened to be giving Kit Carson an order.

  “I been gone so long you nearly got grown on me,” Jim told her. “Why do I have to go away?”

  “You bother my mother too much,” Petal said. “That’s why.”

  I bother her.”

  Petal didn’t like this equivocation. Why wouldn’t the tall man just go?

  “When you go away I can take my nap with Mommy,” Petal explained.

  “Well, you’re welcome to take your nap with both of us, I guess,” Jim said. “You and Petey too, and Monty.”

  The last thing Petal was prepared to tolerate was having her brothers around at nap time. Nap time meant her and her mother—no strangers.

  “You bother my mother too much, that’s why you have to go away,” Petal insisted, returning to her original charge.

  A few hours later, clutching the blue rooster, Petal wandered into her mother’s bedroom, only to find the tall stranger there beside her mother.

  “I told him to go away, he bothers you too much,” Petal insisted.

  “In fact he doesn’t bother me at all, little girl,” Tasmin said. “He bothers you!”

  Exasperated that her mother would take such a tack, Petal went immediately to a corner and pressed her face into it. Her mother and the tall man took no notice. If she threw a tantrum Little Onion would come and carry her away. After a bit she left the corner and approached the bed. She gave the tall man a bit of a smile.

  “Lift me up,” she said—and he did. “Now she’s going to pile on the charm,” Tasmin warned.

  Petal tried to put her hand over her mother’s bad mouth.

  “I have a blue rooster,” she remarked, holding it up so Jim could inspect it.

  “Here comes the charm,” Tasmin said.

  Petal ignored her mother. “His name is Cock-adoodle,” she said.

  “I eat roosters,” Jim said, deadpan.

  Petal was taken aback. She studied her opponent.

  “Blue roosters make mighty good eating,” Jim said.

  Petal put the rooster behind her. “It was Petey’s rooster but he gave it to me,” she said.

  “What an outrageous lie!” Tasmin said. “You stole that rooster.”

  “It followed me home,” Petal said, keeping a close eye on the stranger.

  “She’ll argue for hours, you won’t wear her down,” Tasmin warned.

  “I may be hungry when I wake up from my nap,” Jim said. “I may want to eat a rooster. I hope I can find a blue one.”

  He then shut his eyes—in a minute he emitted a faint snore.

  “I hope he goes away,” Petal remarked. “It won’t help you—next time he goes away we’re going with him,” Tasmin informed her.

  Petal studied the sleeping man. Then she slipped off the bed and hid the blue rooster amid Little Onion’s kit. It was going to be necessary to watch this sleeping man.

  20

  . . . when it came to deciding on a route the two could not agree.

  THOUGH THEY HAD BEEN absent from Santa Fe for almost a year, Jim and Kit had not attempted California; when it came to deciding on a route, the two could not agree. Kit insisted that the better route lay south, along the Gila River. Jim, who wanted to strike due west, was taken aback.

  “The Gila River?” he said. “We’ll starve before we get anywhere near the Gila River.”

  “That’s the way I’m going, you can do as you please,” said Kit.

  A moment later, though, he revealed more conflicted feelings.

  “Josie don’t want me to go at all,” he admitted. “If the dern Bents like California so much, let them go. Josie don’t think it’s right for a husband to take off and be gone that long.”

  “I expect most wives would take that line,” Jim told him.

  While they were grappling with these issues the matter was settled for them by the surprising arrival of a counterorder from the Bents, delivered by the taciturn old hunter Lonesome Dick, who seemed put out that he had had to ride so hard on their behalf.

  “I’ve sweated my horse,” the old man said, leaving no doubt that he considered it their fault.

  “It don’t hurt a horse to sweat,” Kit pointed out. “What do they want now?”

  “They want you to go to New Orleans,” Lonesome Dick informed them. “I’m going to Californy. If they’d sent me in the first place I’d already be halfway there.”

  “Dick’s never been friendly,” Kit said, as they watched the old man ride off.

  Two months later the two of them were on the under deck of a Mississippi River steamer, watching the low buildings of Saint Louis fade out of sight to the stern. It seemed that a large shipment of goods off an English ship that had encountered foul weather had been put off at New Orleans, rather than Baltimore, as had been planned. It was said to contain Lord Berrybender’s new guns, as well as a large quantity of cloth and other tradable items.

  Kit, who couldn’t imagine an easier way to travel than by steamboat, was in high spirits.

  “I bet there’s a passel of fish in this river,” he claimed. “They say catfish get as big as horses.”

  “If there’s fish that big I’d hope to stay out of their way,” Jim observed. “A whale swallowed down Jonah, I recall.”

  He was glad to be out of Saint Louis—its jostle and stench were not to his liking—but he at once took to steamboat travel. He found that he could sit and watch the widening waters for hours, letting his thoughts drift to no purpose. Clouds formed; rainstorms blew in and blew out. Jim preferred the spacious, grassy plains to the thick forests that now covered the shores, but the river itself he liked. Kit felt the same.

  “It’d be easy, being a waterman,” he said. “You just float along—no tramping.”

  “We’ll get plenty of tramping on the way back,” Jim reminded him. Charles Bent, ever hopeful of new territory, wanted them to pack the goods overland much of the way back, crossing a long stretch of dangerous country. It was Charles Bent’s opinion that there would soon be a steady stream of immigrants along the southern route, and he meant to have a trading post somewhere along it, preferably near the Canadian River. Scouting possible locations was Jim and Kit’s real mission.

  “Time waits for no man,” Charles Bent declared. “If we don’t get us a post down that way you can bet somebody else will.”

  Neither Jim nor Kit felt any eagerness to see what the southern tribes felt about this—they agreed in advance to avoid these tribes, particularly the Comanches, and concentrate o
n getting the goods safely back to the big post on the Arkansas. If Charles Bent wanted to persuade the Comanches to lay down their lances and scalping knives, let him do it himself.

  As the steamer proceeded south, the gradual widening of the river filled Jim with amazement.

  He had never expected to be riding safely down such a vastness of water. The constant traffic in all manner of boats, as they approached the port, was in itself a delight to watch.

  The gradual spread of the great plain of water had a sobering effect on Kit.

  “A river this big could swallow this boat like a pill,” he observed. “I could never swim a river this wide. I’d be drownt.”

  “Or swallowed by one of them big catfish,” Jim reminded him. On several occasions the boatmen, using ropes for lines, had hooked catfish that were not much smaller than horses; the fish were so large that they had to be cut up before their flesh could be brought on deck.

  “The more I think about all this water the less I like it,” Kit remarked.

  “We’ll be there tomorrow—go away if you’re going to complain,” Jim protested. “I’d like to enjoy the sights, if you don’t mind.”

  Jim sat on deck all night, watching the starlight on the water, listening to unfamiliar bird cries, wondering why the movement of water was so soothing.

  The turmoil on the docks was more intense even than what they had encountered in Saint Louis.

  “I am certainly surprised to know there are so many black people in the world,” Kit said.

  Jim was surprised on that score too—although the shades of color on the New Orleans waterfront were more various than he had seen anywhere.

  There were very black people, and lightly black people; there were yellow people and people the color of coffee; Spanish people, Choctaw Indians, French sailors, English sailors, large whores and small whores; drunks lying in the mud; wagons being loaded and boats being unloaded; fishermen hawking their catch: such a bustle of people that Jim wished immediately to be back on the broad, calm river. Besides the jostle, he felt closed in by the heavy vegetation. The humid air left them both sweating profusely. Flies and mosquitoes were persistent. They passed a pen full of dusty cattle, and another pen full of silent, apathetic slaves.