Streets of Laredo

by Larry McMurtry

"Here, scat--who are you?" he said. He was not used to such commotion at that hour. Usually no more than a cowboy or two got off the Fort Worth train.

  "Oh, Pa," Clarie said, when she awoke and saw her father. Ben got awake and hugged his father, but waking up proved too much for Georgie and August. Both yawned heavily and went back to sleep. Laurie, the baby, opened her eyes and started to cry. She didn't know who the strange man was, hugging Clarie. Then her mother reached down and took her. There was an old man standing near who had only sticks for legs. Laurie looked at him curiously, as her mother hugged her.

  Goodnight had arranged for a cowboy to bring a wagon. The cowboy arrived at sunup, driving the wagon and leading two horses. The boys were awake by then. They chased the hens and played with the goats. They took to Rafael right away but were a little shy with Teresa, who held her rooster in her arms.

  "There must be a doctor somewhere who could help that girl see," Clara told Lorena.

  Although she had just arrived in Texas, she was already beginning to dread the trip home, by herself. She had grown used to Lorena's children, and to having laughter and fusses in her house. There had been life in her house again; since her daughters left, it seemed to her, there had been no life in her house. It was hard for her, one aging woman, to bring life to a home. Yet how she missed it!

  Goodnight mounted one of the horses; the cowboy mounted the other. Pea Eye took the reins of the team. It was still all he could do to keep from bawling, at the sight of his children and the familiar country.

  "Many thanks for the loan of the wagon," he said, to Mr. Goodnight.

  "You're welcome," Goodnight replied.

  He had not quite mastered his shock at the change in Woodrow Call.

  "I'll soon repay that loan," Lorena told him. She had not told Pea Eye she had borrowed money. She intended to discuss it with Mr.

  Goodnight privately, but there had not been a moment when she could speak to him alone. She was a little worried about Pea Eye's reaction, but Pea Eye let Georgie sit on his lap and pretend to drive the team--he didn't hear the remark about the loan.

  "We're branding today," Goodnight said. "In fact, we're branding all this week. When we're done, I'll trot over and check on the bunch of you." He tipped his hat to the two ladies and turned his horse; he rode a few steps and then turned back to Lorena.

  "Mrs. Parker, I hope you'll be opening the school again," he said.

  "I'll be opening the school again, Mr.

  Goodnight," Lorena said to him. "I'll be opening it again soon." "Well, I've got to git," Goodnight said. He had not gotten around to firing Muley, the cook; it was a matter that preyed on his mind, as he and the cowboy loped away.

  At first, they put Captain Call in a little granary in the barn. There was no other place for him. The granary was fairly clean; there had never been any grain in it, because they had never been able to afford any, and had so far failed to raise enough to store. The house itself was so crowded that Clara had to sleep in a hallway during her visit.

  "This hall is fine," Clara said. "I won't have these boys evicted from their bedroom for an old lady." "I bet they didn't sleep in a hall at your house," Lorena said.

  "My house is bigger," Clara admitted.

  Everyone was surprised at how quickly Teresa learned her way around the farm. She went to the barn every morning to take Call coffee and bacon, and she learned all the farm animals by sound. She rarely stumbled. Ben fought with her--he wasn't prepared for another girl to be living with them. It hadn't been in his plans. Teresa more than held her own in the fights, though. She was quicker in the head than Ben, and she confounded him with her retorts.

  "The doctor in San Antonio said she'd never see," Lorena told Clara.

  "He's just one doctor," Clara said.

  Call didn't mind bunking in the granary.

  Excepting Teresa, who came to him often to bring him food or tell him her stories, he didn't want to see people or be around them. He had a kerosene lamp, but rarely lit it. There was hay in the barn; he didn't want to take a chance at falling asleep, knocking the lamp over, and burning the barn down.

  Three old cowboys, one of them a former Ranger, stopped by to see him in the first week.

  They wanted to congratulate him on having rid the country of Mox Mox; mainly, though, they just wanted to see him, to talk about old times.

  Call was uncomfortable with the men, and he let them do the talking. He felt like an impostor. He was no longer the man who had lived the old times; he was no longer even the man who had killed Mox Mox. That man was not the cripple who lived in a granary, in a barn on the Quitaque. That man lived back somewhere in memory, across a canyon, across the Pecos; that man had been blown away, as Brookshire feared he would be, on the plains of time.

  The cowboys felt awkward. The Captain clearly did not want to see them. They regretted coming, and they left, disquieted by what had happened to a man they had once regarded as invincible.

  His branding done, Goodnight came. He took a look at Call and the granary, and left. Three days later, two wagons full of lumber arrived, accompanied by six cowboys.

  Between sunup and sundown of the next day, they built Call a shack. They had brought with them the few possessions he had left in the little line cabin on the Palo Duro. It was just a shack, but it was better than an oat bin. Pea Eye helped with the work, although he was a poor carpenter.

  He soon hit himself with the hammer, raising a blood blister that was so large and painful, Lorena had to eventually cut off the nail.

  She was grateful to Goodnight for the shack, for she had felt bad about putting the Captain in the barn. But she worried about the debt.

  "I'll pay you back, Mr. Goodnight," she told him. "I expect it'll be a while, though. But we're good for it, eventually. I just don't know when." "I'd take up a collection for Call, but I suppose it would embarrass him," Goodnight said. "He's ruined now, but there are plenty of people in this part of the country who would have been shot or scalped or robbed, if not for him. Or their folks would have been, if not them." Lorena's mind was on the debt. In the back of her mind was the knowledge, which she had not yet shared with Pea, that she was pregnant.

  "We intend to pay you back, Mr.

  Goodnight," she said again, firmly.

  "If Mrs. Allen needs a ride to the depot, and if you'll get word to me, I'll send a cowboy with a buggy," Goodnight said.

  Sometimes, if Teresa urged him, Call would hobble to the house for his meals. He and Clara rarely spoke. When the meal was finished, it was Teresa who got Call his crutches and helped him from his chair.

  If Teresa was out of the room for five minutes, Call grew visibly anxious. He would look around for her.

  "Where's Tessie?" he would ask, if Teresa was absent too long. "Ain't Tessie here?" Teresa always walked with him, holding him lightly by the arm as he went back to his shack.

  "He's formed an attachment," Clara said, watching. "It's an attachment to a female, too." "Yes," Lorena said. "He wouldn't last long without Tessie." Clara sighed. She knew she ought to be going home soon. It was time to geld the foals, and put the mares with stud. Yet she hated to leave Lorena's loud, lively household. Sleeping in a hall was better than sleeping in an empty house. Laurie would toddle out in the morning, and cuddle with her. Sometimes little August would come, asking for a story. If August came, Georgie soon followed. She would lay in a heap of children, sometimes for an hour. In Nebraska, August and Georgie had slept in her bed; the little girl usually slept with Clarie.

  In the hallway, holding the bright little boy and the babbling girl, Clara daydreamed about changing her life. She realized she had lost touch, just from not touching. Her daughters had produced no grandchildren for her to hold or carry to bed. It didn't seem to her that her own life had ever been entirely normal, but at least during her years of child raising, she had had people with her, in her house and in her bed--people to touch.

  Now that was lost. Lorena's children were the first humans
she had held in her arms in years. It was not good, for from being lonely too long she had become resigned.

  "No beaux?" Lorena asked one morning, when they were sitting in the kitchen, talking. The children had all run outside with Rafael to look for his goats. One of them had strayed, during the night.

  Lorena's children had become protective of Rafael, all of them. She didn't harbor much hope for that particular goat, though. The coyotes were too numerous and too hungry.

  "No beaux," Clara admitted. "I expect it's just as well. I'm too set in my ways now. I doubt there's a man alive who could put up with me. .

  "Even if there is such a man alive, he probably doesn't live in Nebraska," Clara added, a little later.

  Lorena thought her old friend looked sad.

  "You probably run all the boys off," she said. "You have to be gentle with menfolk, you know.

  They aren't tough, like us." "Well, I did scatter a few, I guess," Clara said. "But that was years ago." Rafael stumbled back in, crying; the remains of the goat had been found. The boys all wore long faces. Lorena hugged Rafael, and shushed him. They were planning to acquire a few goats soon, and Rafael could look after them.

  The day she was to leave for Nebraska, Clara walked down to say farewell to Call. He was sitting with Teresa outside his shack, whittling a stick. Teresa liked to feel the smoothness of the wood of the sticks, once Call had whittled all the knots away. He had smoothed her a number of little sticks to play with. Teresa touched them with her fingers, and sometimes she held one to her cheek.

  "Well, I'm off to the depot, I guess," Clara said. "I wanted to say goodbye, Woodrow." Call had been hoping Clara would come by, before she left. There was something he wanted to ask her.

  But he didn't want Teresa to hear his question.

  "Tessie, would you go to the house and ask Mrs.

  Parker if I could have some coffee?" he asked Teresa. "I woke up with a headache--coffee usually helps." Teresa handed him back the little smoothed stick and started up the path to the house. She was barefooted; the day was warm. She stepped on a grass burr and had to pause for a moment, standing on one leg in order to remove it from her foot.

  "I've heard there were schools for the blind," Call said to Clara. "Do you know anything about them?" "Why, no," Clara replied. "Tessie's the first blind person I've ever had in my life.

  But I can inquire for you, Woodrow." "I'd appreciate it," Call said.

  "I've got a little money saved. If there's a way Teresa can get her education, I'd like to help. I believe she's bright." "You're right about that--she's bright," Clara told him.

  "If she goes away, I'm sure we'll all miss her," Call said.

  "You most of all, Woodrow," Clara said.

  Call didn't answer, but the look on his face said more than Clara wanted to hear or see or know about one human missing another. She shook his hand and turned toward the house.

  A moment later, she grew irritated-- unreasonably irritated. She turned back on the path.

  "Call Lorena Lorena," she said, loudly.

  "You don't have to call her Mrs. Parker now.

  "The man's trying, but he just rubs me the wrong way," Clara said, when she marched into the kitchen. Lorena was washing a cut on Georgie's hand. She wasn't paying much attention.

  Later, though, she remembered the remark. She wondered what Clara had meant by it, and why she looked so angry when she came in.

  The bounty on Joey Garza was never collected. Colonel Terry sent a detective to look into the circumstances of his death, and the detective's research revealed that the fatal shot, the one that finished Joey Garza, had been fired by a Mexican butcher in Ojinaga, Mexico. Besides that, the butcher then claimed that Joey Garza's own mother had stabbed the young bandit, and that Joey had turned the knife on her and killed her, depriving the village of its best midwife.

  Citing the careless loss of the ledger books, which made it impossible to compute the costs of the expedition accurately, the railroad halved Brookshire's pension. What was left was sent to his widowed sister in Avon, Connecticut.

  The same sister received a long letter from a Mrs.

  P. E. Parker, of Quitaque, Texas.

  Mrs. Parker assured the grieving sister that the last words Mr. Parker had heard Brookshire say were to remember his sister and send her his love.

  Call discovered that he had a gift for sharpening tools. Even with one hand, it was a skill he more than mastered. One day, watching Pea Eye futilely trying to cut a piece of rawhide with a dull knife, Call reached out and took it from Pea. He had a whetstone, and he soon had a good edge on the blade.

  From then on, Pea Eye and Lorena brought whatever needed sharpening to the Captain. He sharpened scissors and shovel blades. He sharpened axes and rasps, and scythes and awls, and planing blades. He even improved the slicing edge on the plows.

  In time, the neighbors heard of Call's skill and began to ride over with bushel baskets full of knives and hatchets, for him to work on.

  Lorena insisted that he order a wooden leg.

  They wrote off for catalogues. Finally, Call ordered one--to sharpen some of the larger tools properly, he needed to be able to stand.

  When the leg came, Call found that he had to whittle it a bit to secure a smooth fit.

  He was shy about it, at first. No one but Teresa could be with him, when he put on his leg or took it off. She learned to tuck his pants leg expertly. She laughed at him if he stumbled, but Call did not mind. The truth was, the leg made a big difference. Now he could stand up and work all day.

  Clara Allen promptly sent him some literature on schools for the blind. The best one seemed to be in Cincinnati. Call hadn't mentioned school to Teresa yet; the thought of sending her away was too sharp a pain. But he did discuss the matter with Lorena. Privately, Lorena was torn. She had had another boy, Tommy, and was pregnant yet again. The house was overfull. She and Pea Eye had paid Mr.

  Goodnight back for the train fare. She was still running the school by herself, except for Clarie's help with the math. Clarie was engaged to Roy Benson, and would be leaving soon. The farm was doing a little better, but they still had almost no cash money.

  Lorena's concern when the school came up wasn't for Teresa, who had not only Maria's look but Maria's strength. Lorena wanted Tessie to have an education, and she wanted her to have a chance to support herself.

  But Captain Call had no one but the girl. He scarcely knew Lorena's children; he scarcely knew her, or Pea Eye, even.

  He worked all day at his sharpening, but except for Teresa, he had no one. Even looking at the Captain, unless he was with Teresa, was painful.

  Often when he was looking at Teresa, Call had tears in his eyes. But otherwise, there was nothing in his eyes--he was an absence.

  Lorena feared he would die, if Teresa left.

  "Let's wait one more year, Captain," Lorena told him. "Let's wait one more year." "I expect that's best," Call said.

  Charles Goodnight and a young cowboy named J.

  D. Brown were out looking for a stray bull one day. They finally found the bull on the Quitaque, dead; it had managed to strangle itself with a coil of barbed wire.

  Now and again, if he was in the vicinity, Goodnight stopped by to pay his respects to Call and the Parkers.

  They found Call standing in his workroom in the barn, sharpening a sickle that a farmer from Silverton had nicked badly while cutting hay. The blind girl was rounding up her chickens.

  There must have been fifty chickens, at least, and there were also more goats than Goodnight was accustomed to seeing anywhere. They visited a minute, or tried to. Call scarcely looked up from his work. He had several hatchets and an axe in a bucket beside him that he needed to sharpen, once he finished with the sickle.

  Pea Eye was out plowing, but Goodnight and J. D. Brown took a glass of buttermilk with Lorena before they left. Lorena was heavy with child; she paid Goodnight twenty dollars against her debt on the shack he had built for Call.

 
; On the ride back across the gray plains, the young cowboy--he was just twenty--looked rather despondent. Goodnight ignored his despondence for a while, then got tired of it.

  What did a healthy sprout of twenty have to be despondent about?

  "What's made you look so peaked, J.d.?" Goodnight inquired.

  "Why, it's Captain Call, I guess," the young cowboy said. He was glad to talk about it, to get his dark feelings out.

  "What about Captain Call?" Goodnight asked.

  "Why, wasn't he a great Ranger?" the boy asked. "I've always heard he was the greatest Ranger of all." "Yes, he had exceptional determination," Goodnight told him.

  "Well, but now look ... what's he doing?

  Sharpening sickles in a dern barn!" J.d.

  exclaimed.

  Goodnight was silent for a bit. He wished his young cowboys would keep their minds on the stock, and not be worrying so about things they couldn't change.

  "Woodrow Call had his time," he said, finally. "It was a long time, too. Life's but a knife edge, anyway. Sooner or later people slip and get cut." "Well, you ain't slipped," J. D.

  Brown said.

  "How would you know, son?" Goodnight said.

  In the fall of the following year, Clara Allen was pawed to death by a piebald stallion named Marbles. Everyone was scared of the stallion except Clara; Marbles, a beautiful animal, was her special pride.

  On the morning of the attack three cowboys, including Chollo, her old vaquero, the most experienced man on the ranch, had urged her not to go into the pen with the stud.

  "He's mad today ... wait," Chollo told her.

  "He's my horse--he won't hurt me," Clara said, shutting the gate behind her. The stallion attacked her at once. Four men leapt into the corral but could not drive him off.

  They didn't want to shoot the stallion, for Clara would never forgive them for it, if she lived.

  Finally, they shot the horse anyway, but Clara Allen was dead before they could carry her out of the pen.

  "It's risky, raising studs," Call said.

  "She must have been good with horses, or she wouldn't have lasted this long." Lorena shut herself in her room, when she heard the news. She didn't come out all day. But then the day passed, and dusk fell. Lorena still wouldn't come out. Pea Eye knocked on the door, just a little knock.