The Lonesome Dove Chronicles (1-4)

by Larry McMurtry

  A few minutes later, Elmira fainted again.

  “She’s too weak,” Cholo said.

  “Poor thing,” Clara said. “I would be too, if I came that far. That baby isn’t going to wait for her to get strong.”

  “No, it’s going to kill her,” Cholo said.

  “Well then, save it, at least,” Clara said, feeling so downcast suddenly that she left the room. She got a water bucket and walked out of the house, meaning to get some water for Bob. It was a beautiful morning, light touching the farthest edges of the plains. Clara noticed the beauty and thought it strange that she could still respond to it, tired as she was and with two people dying in her house—perhaps three. But she loved the fine light of the prairie mornings; it had resurrected her spirits time after time through the years, when it seemed that dirt and cold and death would crush her. Just to see the light spreading like that, far on toward Wyoming, was her joy. It seemed to put energy into her, make her want to do things.

  And the thing she wanted most to do was plant flowers—flowers that might bloom in the light. She did plant them, ordering bulbs and seeds from the East. The light brought them up, and then the wind tore them from her. Worse than the dirt she hated the wind. The dirt she could hold her own with, sweeping it away each morning, but the wind was endless and fierce. It renewed itself again and again, curling out of the north to take her flowers from her, petal by petal, until nothing remained but the sad stalks. Clara kept on planting anyway, hiding the flowers in the most protected spots she could find. The wind always found them too, in time, but sometimes the blooms lasted a few days before the petals were blown away. It was a battle she wouldn’t give up on: every winter she read seed catalogues with the girls and described to them the flowers they would have when spring came.

  Coming back with the bucket from the cistern she noticed the two dirty, silent men sitting on the wagon—she had walked past them without a thought on her way to the well.

  “Is it born yet?” Luke asked.

  “Not yet,” Clara said. “She’s too tired to help much.”

  The large man followed her with his eyes but said nothing.

  “You’ve got too much fire in that stove, you’ll burn everything,” Clara said, when she saw how the girls were progressing with breakfast.

  “Oh, Ma, we can cook,” Sally said. She loved to get her mother out of the kitchen—then she could boss her younger sister around.

  “Is that woman real sick?” Betsey asked. “Why does she yell so much?”

  “She’s working at a hard task,” Clara said. “You better not burn that porridge, because I want some.”

  She carried the bucket up to the bedroom, pulled the smelly sheets out from under Bob, and washed him. Bob stared straight up, as he always did. Usually she warmed the water but this morning she hadn’t taken the time. It was cold and raised goose bumps on his legs. His big ribs seemed to stick out more every day. She had forgotten to bring fresh sheets—it was a constant problem, keeping fresh sheets—so she covered him with a blanket and walked out on her porch for a minute. She heard Elmira begin to moan, again and again. She ought to go relieve Cholo, she knew, but she didn’t rush. The birth might take another day. Everything took longer than it should, or else went too quick. Her sons’ lives had been whipped away like a breath, while her husband had lain motionless for two months and still wasn’t dead. It was wearying, trying to adjust to all the paces life required.

  After she had stood for a moment on the cool porch, she went down the hall, just in time to hold Elmira down and watch Cholo ease a baby boy from her bloodied loins.

  The baby looked dead, and Elmira looked as if she were dying—but in fact both lived. Cholo held the little boy close to his face and blew on it, until finally the child moved and began to cry, a thin sound not much stronger than the squeak of a mouse. Elmira had passed out, but she was breathing.

  Clara went downstairs to heat some water and saw that the girls had taken breakfast to the two men. They were standing around while the men ate, not to be denied the novelty of conversation, even if only with two buffalo hunters, one of whom wouldn’t talk. It made her want to cry, suddenly, that her children were so devoid of playmates that they would hang around two sullen men just for the excitement of company. She heated the water and let the girls be. Probably the men would go on soon, though Luke seemed to be talking to the girls happily. Maybe he was as lonesome as they were.

  When she went up with the hot water Elmira was awake, her eyes wide open. She was pale, almost bloodless, no color in her cheeks at all.

  “It’s a miracle you got here,” Clara said. “If you’d had that baby down on the plains I doubt either one of you would have lived.”

  The old Mexican had wrapped the infant in a flannel robe and brought it to Elmira to see, but Elmira didn’t look at it. She didn’t speak and she wouldn’t look.

  She didn’t want the baby. Maybe it’ll die, she thought. Dee won’t want it either.

  Clara saw the woman turn her eyes away. Without a word she took the infant from Cholo and walked downstairs with it, out into the sunlight. The girls still stood by the wagon, though the men had eaten. She shielded the baby’s eyes with the robe and carried it over to the group.

  “Oh, Ma,” Betsey said—she had never seen a newborn child. “What’s its name?”

  “The lady’s too tired to worry about naming it just now,” Clara said. “It’s a boy, though.”

  “It’s lucky we got here, ain’t it?” Luke said. “Me and Zwey would have had no idea what to do.”

  “Yes, it’s lucky,” Clara said.

  Big Zwey stared at the baby silently for a time. “It’s red, Luke,” he said finally. “I guess it’s an Indian.”

  Clara laughed. “It’s no Indian,” she said. “Babies mostly are red.”

  “Can I hold it?” Sally asked. “I held Betsey, I know how.”

  Clara let her take the child. Cholo had come downstairs and was standing at the back porch, a cup of coffee in his hand.

  “Zwey wants to get to town,” Luke said. “Can Ellie go yet?”

  “Oh, no,” Clara said. “She’s had a bad time and she’s weak. It would kill her to travel today. She’ll need to rest for about a week. Maybe you could come back for her, or else we could bring her in our little wagon when she gets well.”

  But Zwey refused to leave. Ellie had wanted to get to town, he remembered, and he was determined to wait until she could go. He sat in the shade of the wagon all day and taught the two young girls how to play mumblety-peg. Clara looked out at them occasionally from the upper windows—there seemed no harm in the man. Luke, bored, had ridden off with Cholo to check the mares.

  When Clara took the child in to nurse, she began to see that Elmira didn’t want it. She turned her wide eyes away when Clara brought it near. The infant was whimpering and hungry.

  “Ma’am, it’s got to nurse,” Clara said. Elmira made no objection when the baby was put to her breast, but the business was difficult. At first no milk would come—Clara began to fear the baby would weaken and die before it could even be fed. Finally it nursed a little but the milk didn’t satisfy it—an hour later it was crying in hunger again.

  Thin milk, Clara thought—and no wonder, for the woman probably hadn’t eaten a decent meal in months. She refused to look at the baby, even when it took her breast. Clara had to hold it and encourage it, rubbing its little lips with milk.

  “They say you’re married to a sheriff,” Clara said, thinking conversation might help. The man might be the cause of her flight, she thought. She probably didn’t want him in the first place, and hadn’t asked for this child.

  Elmira didn’t answer. She didn’t want to talk to this woman. Her breasts were so full they hurt; she didn’t care that the baby took the milk, she just didn’t want to look at it. She wanted to get up and make Zwey take her to town, to Dee, but she knew she couldn’t do it yet. Her legs were so weak she could hardly move them on the bed. She would never
get downstairs unless she crawled.

  Clara looked at Elmira for a moment and held her peace. It was not a great surprise for her that the woman didn’t want the baby. She hadn’t wanted Sally, out of fear that she would die. The woman must have her own fears—after all, she had traveled for months across the plains with two buffalo hunters. Perhaps she was fleeing a man, perhaps looking for a man, perhaps just running—there was no point in pressing questions, for the woman might not know herself why she ran.

  Besides, Clara remembered the immense fatigue that had seized her when Betsey was born. Though the last, Betsey had been the most difficult of her births, and when it was over she could not lift her head for three hours. To speak took an immense effort—and Elmira had had a harder time than she had. Best just to let her rest. When her strength came back she might not be so ill-disposed toward the child.

  Clara took the baby downstairs and had the girls watch him while she went outside and killed a pullet. Big Zwey watched silently from the wagon as she quickly wrung the chicken’s neck and plucked and cleaned it.

  “It takes a mess of chicken soup to run this household these days,” she said, bringing the chicken back in. They had some broth left and she heated a little and took it to Elmira. She was startled to find Elmira on her feet, staring out the window.

  “Goodness, you best lay down,” Clara said. “You’ve lost blood—we’ve got to build you up.”

  Elmira obeyed passively. She allowed Clara to feed her a few spoonfuls of the soup.

  “How far’s town?” she asked.

  “Too far for you to walk, or ride either,” Clara said. “That town isn’t going to run away. Can’t you just rest for a day or two?”

  Elmira didn’t answer. The old man had said Dee was a pistolero. Though she didn’t care what Dee was, as long as she could find him, the news worried her. Somebody might shoot him before she arrived. He might leave, might have already left. She couldn’t stand the thought. The future had shrunk to one fact: Dee Boot. If she couldn’t find him she meant to kill herself.

  Clara tried several times during the day to get Elmira interested in the little boy, but with no success. Elmira allowed it to nurse, but that was not successful, either. The milk was so weak that the baby would only sleep an hour and then be hungry again. Her girls wanted to know why the baby cried so much. “He’s hungry,” Clara said.

  “I can milk the cow early,” Sally said. “We can give him some of that milk.”

  “We may have to,” Clara said. “We’ll have to boil it first.” It’ll be too rich for him and the colic will probably kill him, she thought. She carried the helpless little creature herself most of the day, rocking him in her arms and whispering to him. From being red, he had gone to pale, and he was a small baby, not five pounds, she guessed. She herself was very tired, and as the evening drew on and the sun fell she found herself in a very uneven temper—scolding the girls harshly for their loudness one minute, going out on her porch with the baby, almost in tears herself, another. Perhaps it’s best that it dies, she doesn’t want it, she thought, and then the next moment the baby’s eyes would open for a second and her heart would fill. Then she would reproach herself for her own callousness.

  When night fell she went in and lit a lamp in the room where Elmira lay. Clara, seeing that her eyes were open, started to take the baby to her. But once again Elmira turned her head away.

  “What’s your husband’s name?” Clara asked.

  “I’m looking for Dee Boot,” Elmira said. She didn’t want to say July’s name. The baby was whimpering but she didn’t care. It was July’s and she didn’t want to have anything to do with anything of July’s.

  Clara got the infant to nurse a little and then took it up to her own room, to lie down awhile. She knew it wouldn’t sleep long, but she herself had to sleep and was afraid to trust it with its mother yet.

  At some point she heard the baby whimpering but she was too tired to rise. In the back of her mind she knew that she had to get up and feed Bob but the desire to sleep was too heavy—she couldn’t make herself move.

  Then she felt a hand on her shoulder and saw Cholo kneeling by the bed.

  “What’s the matter?” Clara asked.

  “They leave,” Cholo said.

  Clara jumped up and ran into the room where Elmira had been—sure enough, she was gone. She went to the window and could see the wagon, north of the corrals. Behind her she could hear the baby crying.

  “Señora, I couldn’t stop them,” Cholo said.

  “I doubt they’ll stop just because you ask, and we don’t need any gunfights,” Clara said.

  “Let ’em go. If she lives, she might come back. Did you milk?”

  Cholo nodded.

  “I wish we had a goat,” Clara said. “I’ve heard goat’s milk is better for babies than cow’s milk. If you see any goats next time you go to town, let’s buy a couple.”

  Then she grew a little embarrassed. Sometimes she talked to Cholo as if he were her husband, and not Bob. She went downstairs, made a fire in the cookstove and began to boil some milk. When it was boiled, she took it up and gave the baby a little, dipping a cotton rag in the milk and letting the baby suck it. It was a slow method and took patience. The child was too weak to work at it, but she knew if she didn’t persist the baby would only get weaker and die. So she kept on, dribbling milk into its mouth even when it grew too tired to suck on the rag.

  “I know this is slow,” she whispered to it. When the baby had taken all it would, she got up to walk it. It was a nice moonlight night and she went out on her porch for a while. The baby was asleep, tucked against her breast. You could be worse off, she thought, looking at it. Your mother had pretty good sense—she waited to have you until she got to where there were people who’ll look after you.

  Then she remembered that she had not fed Bob. She took the baby down to the kitchen and heated the chicken broth. “Think of the work I’d save if everything didn’t have to be hot,” she said to the infant, who slept on.

  She laid it at the foot of Bob’s bed while she fed her husband, tilting his head so he could swallow. It was strange to her that he could swallow when he couldn’t even close his eyes. He was a big man with a big head—every time she fed him her wrist ached from supporting his head.

  “I guess we got us a boy, Bob,” she said. The doctors had told her to talk to him—they thought it might make a difference, but Clara found that the only difference was that she got depressed. The depressing aspect of it was that it reminded her too clearly of their years together, for she had liked to chatter, and Bob never talked. She had talked at him for years and got no answers. He only spoke if money was concerned. She would talk for two hours and he would never utter a sentence. So far as conversation went, the marriage was no different than it had ever been—it was just easier for her to have her way about money, something that also struck her as sad.

  She picked the baby up and held it to her bosom—the thought was in her head that if he saw her with a child it might make a difference. Bob might see it, think it was theirs. It might startle him into life again.

  It was unnatural, she knew, for a mother to leave her child a day after it was born. Of course, children were endless work. They came when you didn’t want them and had needs you didn’t always want to meet. Worst of all, they died no matter how much you loved them—the death of her own had frozen the hope inside her harder than the wintry ground. Her hopes had frozen hard and she vowed to keep it that way, and yet she hadn’t: the hopes thawed. She had hopes for her girls, and might even come to have them for the baby at her bosom, child of another mother. Weak as it was, and slim though its chances, she liked holding the child to her. I stole you, she thought. I got you and I didn’t even have to go through the pain. Your mother’s a fool not to want you, but she’s smart to realize you wouldn’t have much of a chance with her and those buffalo hunters.

  It wasn’t smartness, though, she thought—the woman just didn’t care.
>
  She looked down at Bob and saw that the baby had made no difference. He lay as he had, nothing left to him but need. Suddenly Clara felt angry that the man had been fool enough to think he could break that mare, when both she and Cholo had warned him to leave her alone. It made her angry at herself, to have lived so long with a horse trader who had no more savvy than that.

  Yet there he was, his eyes staring upward, as helpless as the baby. She put the child down again and fed Bob soup until her wrist got tired from holding his head. Then she lay Bob’s head back on his pillow, and ate the rest of the chicken soup herself.

  76.

  BIG ZWEY WAS WORRIED that Elmira had left the baby. When she came out to the wagon, she didn’t have it. “Hitch the team and let’s go,” she said, and that was all she said. He did it, but he felt confused.

  “Ain’t we gonna take the baby?” he asked shyly, just before they left.

  Elmira didn’t answer. She had no breath to answer with, she was so tired. Walking downstairs and out to the wagon had taken all her strength. Zwey had to lift her into the wagon, at that, and she sat propped against the buffalo skins, too tired even to care about the smell. She was so tired that she felt like she wasn’t there. She couldn’t even tell Zwey to start—Luke had to do it.

  “Let’s go, Zwey,” he said. “She don’t want the baby.”

  Zwey started the wagon, and they were soon out of sight of the house, but he was bothered. He kept looking back at Ellie, propped against the buffalo skins, her eyes wide open. Why didn’t she want her baby? It was a puzzle. He had never understood the whole business, but he knew mothers took care of babies, just as husbands took care of wives. In his eyes he had married Ellie, and he intended to take good care of her. He felt he was her husband. They had come all that way together in the wagon. Luke had tried to marry her too, but Zwey had soon stopped that, and Luke had been behaving a lot better since.

  Luke had tied his horse beside the wagon, and he rode on the wagon seat beside Zwey, who kept looking around to see if Ellie was asleep. She wasn’t moving, but her eyes were still wide open.