Huck Out West

by Robert Coover

  Jim was watching me, too, but like a friend watches a friend, and I reckoned he was a body I could talk to, so one night when we was having our usual gabble under the stars like we always used to done, I asked him if he was ever in love, and he says, “Sho. Mos’ all de time.”

  “Did you ever get in trouble?”

  “Awluz tried to.” He grinned his grin, then he closed up and shrugged. “But, praise Jesus, not de kiner trouble dat you is in, chile.”

  I heard him and I didn’t hear him. I didn’t have no time for it. I had to go see if that white hair ribbon was on the back of her wagon. It still warn’t. I’d begun to s’pose she’d forgot me. And then one night, there it was, pinned to the drop curtain at the back of her covered wagon. It most made me jump. I’d been wandering the circled wagons, thinking about her and practicing what I’d say when I seen her again if ever I did, but I disremembered everything with that ribbon blazing up the night. Her little roped hands poked through the flap like a puppet’s, one finger beckoning. When I drawed nigh, I could hear her pap snoring. She didn’t show herself, but whispered behind the flap that we couldn’t wait till Fort Laramie to run off because her father had learnt about some Mormon traders up ahead who steal babies and buy young girls to use for wicked purposes. “Oh sir, I’m so afraid!”

  So was I, but I dasn’t show it. I warn’t generly so desperately needed by somebody, specially a pretty girl, and for certain I ain’t never run off with one. But I was needful, too. My whole distracted rubbage of a life had got some sense to it all of a sudden. If I warn’t the hero she judged I was, then I would have to fashion up such a person out of my own head and set him out to play the part. “Just tell me, miss,” I says in a low growl like I heard men do in saloons, leaning on their elbows, and then my throat snatched up and I had to clear it and start over again, though it warn’t a growl this time, more like a squeak. “Just tell me when you want to go . . .”

  “Oh! I love you, sir,” she says with a little gasp. “You’re so brave and good! Everybody has spoke about the famous Pony Express rider and all they’ve spoke is true! I’ve watched you set your horse so masterful and handsome and twirl your lasso and talk so manly to the others. You’re just the sort of western man that I’ve been dreaming of.” Her pale little hands disappeared behind the flap, and when they come out again, they was holding a shiny cloth which she begged me please to take. “It’s the only nice thing I have left in the whole world. I want you to keep it for me.”

  It was a pair of silky drawers edged at the knees with lace. I ain’t never held such a thing in my hands before. It was slippery as a live fish and I had to grab on to it with both hands.

  “My father won’t let me wear such finery and says he’d use them for greasing the wagon wheels, except they’re my only dowry. When he’s drunk and acting mean, he still might do that, just in spite. I hope you can take care of them for me till we’re far away from here.” The drawers was like oily water and kept sliding through my fingers before I could catch a-holt. I was afraid I might fail her before we even got started. “Now, please, sir, can you help me cut these ropes? There’s some tied round my ankles, too.”

  I was able finally to get a grip onto the lacier bits and stuff the drawers deep inside my shirt so as to give me a free hand to fetch out my clasp knife. My fingers was as useless as mule hoofs, though, and I dropped the knife twice before I could reach for her rawhide ropes, and then I dropped it again. “Give it to me,” she says, falling out of patience, and I done so, just as her pap snorted loud in his sleep and shouted out some cusswords. “Oh no!” she gasps. “He’s waking up! RUN!”

  I bounded back to my sleeping tent on all fours like a scared rabbit, the drawers oozing out of my shirt and scrapping the ground under me. I crawled in under the tent and laid there, my heart pounding like it was looking for a way out through my breastbone and feeling most putrified with disgrace. I felt like that stupid Huckleberry in Tom Sawyer’s wild west yarns. Why can’t you never do nothing right, Huck? I could hear him say. I slid her drawers under my head and lit up my pipe and sucked on it a while, but I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t know if I could ever sleep again. But then all of a sudden I did.

  I startled up from a beautiful dream about running off somewheres with a pretty girl. I was ever so happy and feeling lucky for the first time in my life. Then I recollected it warn’t a dream without everything was. “I love you, sir,” she said. It was so strange and unregular I couldn’t take it in when it popped out of her. Now, laying there in the dark with the soft chorus of snores all around, I could hear her clear as if she was laying alongside of me. “I love you.” It sent a shiver down my back and made me set up to catch my breath.

  I restoked my pipe, tucked the silk drawers under my shirt again, and went for a walk. It was the middle of the night and a million stars was out and it was ever so still and grand. Starlight on the river makes a body feel at home. Starlight on the prairie is dustier and generly makes a body sadful and lonesome. But on that splendid night they was lining out the amazing adventure that me and the girl was starting up that didn’t have no end to it. Only the lonesomeness and sadfulness was ending.

  The hard part, I knowed, would be leaving the wagon train without them catching us. We’d have to pack up in secret and sneak out when nobody warn’t watching. Her father was expecting to get rich off of her and might ruther shoot up his property than lose it, and for certain he’d aim to hang me as a common thief if he catched me. And we’d have to borrow another horse from somewheres. Jackson couldn’t even walk with two riders on him. But these problems warn’t no consequence. My hands was inside my shirt and the drawers was sliding and slithering betwixt my fingers. I’d find a way.

  I warn’t alone in my restlessness. I come across one of the bullwhackers also out studying the stars. He was sucking from a canteen and he don’t ask me if I want some, he only took it off of his shoulder and handled it to me. I took a swallow and it near knocked me over. He says it was made out of chokecherries, crab grass, rubbing alcohol, and cactus figs, with some molasses throwed in to soothe up the bite, and while I was still wheezing, he took the canteen back and poured down a gulletful. He says him and his missus warn’t members of this congregation, but had joined up back at the railhead on the Missouri border. His druthers was to hurry along on horseback, but his missus had a trunkload of fancy dresses and julery and some quality furniture, so he’d had to buy an old farm wagon and rig it up. He seen that I warn’t part of the holy beseechings neither, and judged I might could use a drop. He offered me the canteen again, and I says I did have a considerable longing, but I warn’t certain I could survive another jolt of that brew.

  “What you got there, sport?” he says, squinting. “Is that your guts spillin’ out?”

  It was the silk drawers on the move again. I pushed them back in one side and they leaked out t’other, all a-shivery like they was alive. “It’s a poultice for my buboes,” I says, “and there’s too much grease on it.”

  “You got buboes on your belly?”

  “That probably ain’t how they’re called. That was my pap’s name for them. Of course, he didn’t know nothing.” I shoved the shifty drawers in with both hands and, to change the tune, I asked him why he was a-going west. “You a prospector?”

  “Y’might could say so. I been minin’ a deep gully and I ain’t got to the bottom of it yet.” He let loose a mighty belch like a steamboat blowing out its chimbleys, then took another swig. “I met Blanche in Nawlins where she was a workin’ gal. She says she wants to get to Frisco and I says I’d take her there but she’d have to marry me first. So we got hitched and we been on the road ever since. Blanche she is a hellion, but I cain’t live without her. I cain’t live with her, I cain’t live without her, it’s like a question without no answer.”

  “I’ve knowed ladies like that out here in the Territories,” I says, still trying to swallow down that first swallow. “But mostly I’ve took up with the older ones who is ge
nerly of an easier disposition. I got me a real girl now, though—back home, I mean—who’s most awful sweet and beautiful, with big eyes and little dimples in her cheeks.” I could see her wagon across the way and I had a powerful hankering to go over and crawl into it. “I can’t stop thinking about them dimples.”

  “I know what y’mean, scout. My Blanche has got dimples, too. Nothin’ like ’em for rousin’ a man up. Who’s watchin’ over your gal whilst you’re gallivantin’ round out here?”

  “Don’t no one need to. There’s only me. She said so. We’ve laid out a plan to run off together.”

  “Only you, hunh? Wisht I could say the same. I had to shoot a man in Arkansaw for messin’ with Blanche, and I cain’t really say fer sartin it was his misdoin’. But why run off? Why not jest go home to your cherry’n hook up?”

  “She’s got a mean pap who keeps her locked up and beats her most severe.”

  “Hm. That old bugger should oughter have his ballocks tore off. Unless she’s like my lady. When I jined up to the wagon train, I seen that these was religious people and Blanche she warn’t of the same style. I didn’t want her leading all these pore rubes into tentation, so I keep her tied up in that wagon over yonder where she cain’t git in mischief.”

  He laughed and raised his leg and passed some wind and offered me the canteen again, but what he’d said had just took the tuck all out a me. I turned and upchucked vilently and stumbled back to my tent and throwed myself inside it, him a-laughing drunkenly and shouting out something about my buboes.

  I laid there all night worrying this awful news and feeling so desperate sick I dasn’t raise my head. Was his Blanche and the young girl the same person? I couldn’t patch them up. I kept seeing her pretty face, the tears on her cheeks, her little hands bound up so cruel, her innocent smile. Well, maybe not so innocent. If she was the bullwhacker’s missus, she was a married woman and a hellion and a lady of the night and a bare-face liar, there warn’t no use to deny it. But the worse of it was, even if she was, I still wanted to run off with her. The way she looked at me, nobody’d ever done before, even if it was pretend. Maybe if I went on pretending, she’d go on pretending, and we could live a pretend life like that. Warn’t that how most lives was? Just look at all Tom’s yarns.

  And maybe she and that fellow’s Blanche WARN’T the same person. The more I studied about this, the more certainer it become that there was TWO girls tied up somewheres in this wagon train. Both girls having dimples warn’t the commonest thing maybe, but it warn’t the unpossiblest neither. I begun to feel a sight better.

  When the sun come up, I could set up without commencing to heave again. Jim, seeing how I was, throwed some leaves and roots in a pot and boiled them up for a tea that settled my wobbles better’n a doctor could a done, and I says so and he grinned and showed his gaps and says he’s been palavering with Jesus about me to see if he can’t unloose a blessing on me.

  I got busy setting the wagon train off towards the trail to Laramie, doing my chores, and considering the direction me and the girl was going to take and all the things we must do to get ready for running off. Like finding that other horse, for a sample. I thought I might catch a wild one and break it, and I rode Jackson out ahead of the wagon train to hunt for one. I didn’t find no wild ponies, but I did roust up a herd of antelope, and I chased one down and shot him for supper. I throwed him over Jackson’s back and walked him back to the wagon train, feeling more taller’n usual and hoping she could see me. Everybody was mighty pleased and Jim set to turning the carcass into steaks. I felt a grin coming on, but I kept it off my face because she might be watching and I knowed heroes warn’t the type to let one loose.

  Whilst I was out there, I seen a fresh stream out ahead, so I led the emigrants to it to set up camp for the night, and they was thankful for that, too. They jumped right in, clothes and all, and splashed around, and hollered out their thanks to me and God. I pulled my tired feet out of my boots and give them a soak. I was mostly browned and roughened up by the long travels, but my feet was soft and white, and wanted the air, so I give it to them.

  During the missionaires’ prayer meeting, whilst I was standing in the stream scrubbing down Jackson, I told him when me and the girl ride out of here, we was going to have to cross some mountains and he’ll have to move pretty fast. Was he ready for that? He raised his head up and down like to say yes, then he snorted and shook it like to say no. He was suffering the same counterdictions as me. Believing something and not believing it. Like them missionaires when they’re praying. Seems so natural when you’re rolling round in it, shouting at the sky, so strange when you ain’t. Them’s the thoughts that was rattling through my head when that bullwhacker come a-reeling past, let off one of his chimbley-blowing belches, tilted back his canteen to empty it, and crawled up into the girl’s wagon.

  Jackson’s shiny wet back looked bald and black in the fading light, most of his hair there plain wore off. His head was down in its usual sadful mope, though I knowed these baths pleasured him. When I washed his legs below the knees, I seen he needed new shoes. I hain’t been paying enough heed to the old pony and I told him I was sorry for it, and was aiming to do better by him. I laid the damp blanket over his back to soothe him and we stepped out of the water. I says to him things may not work out here. Him and me might be moving on. He raired no oppositions. People was passing by on their way to their tents and wagons, exchanging God blesses. When they’d gone and the night had settled in, she come sneaking over.

  “My father’s been drinking. He’s sound asleep. We have to go now, sir. I can’t take no more.” Her tearful eyes was pleading so, my heart was near broke. She was so beautiful there in the dusky light I most couldn’t stand it. Her hands was free now. She had my clasp knife in one a them and she touched my face with t’other. “Please, sir, I love you. We have to hurry.” But it was too various for me. I warn’t no Tom Sawyer.

  “I ain’t going, Blanche.”

  Her eyes squinched up a little. “It’s my father! I saw you talking! He’s been lying to you! He only pretends to be my husband so he can do to me the awful things he does!” I reached inside my shirt to give her back her silk drawers, but she wouldn’t take them. “You PROMISED!” She was still beautiful, but she was more like a cat with its tail up than a pretty girl. She looked like she didn’t know whether to kiss me or claw me. What she done was snatch the drawers from me, slash them with my clasp knife, and throng them on the ground. “YOU SKINNY STRING A PUKE!” she yelled. Her face was twisted up now with fury and disgust and she warn’t so pretty like before. “YOU GODDAM LUMP A CRAVEN GANGREENY MULE SHIT! YOU AIN’T WORTH A WET FART IN A HURRY-CANE!” She ripped her blouse away from her shoulder and throwed my knife down with her tore-up drawers. “HELP! RAPE! MURDER! HELP!”

  I yanked up Jackson’s picket and jumped aboard. I could hear the bullwhacker roaring out his wife’s name. As I ripped past the chuck wagon, Jim hollered out and tossed me my rifle. “I’M TERRIBLE SORRY, JIM!” I hollered over my shoulder. There was gunfire, screams, things falling over. “COME BACK HERE!” the bullwhacker bellowed, adding a string of ripe cusswords. “I WANNA TALK TO YOU!” And then his guns went off again.

  I could a stayed if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to.

  CHAPTER XI

  NE NIGHT AFTER I come here to the Gulch, me and Eeteh was out on a ridge, our moccasins off like usual, listening to the katydids and smoking a pipeful of something that was like tobacco but that warn’t tobacco. It was spicier with an extra nudge to it that eased along our talk like the sweet meloncholical way a river flows, following whatever banks it strikes on, pushing this way and then that, and picking up some leaves and tree limbs and other rubbage on the way.

  We was passing tales about when we was little, him here in the Hills, me on the Big River. Mostly we talked about all the bad things that happened, and how we sneaked through them best we could. Eeteh says that both of us growed up too early and missed a lot, so really didn’t g
row up at all, just only got older. I says that’s probably better’n growing up and Eeteh was of the same opinion. Eeteh spoke passable trading-post American and by then I’d lived for a time with his tribe, so we gabbled away in both languages at the same time, hashing them up agreeably and understanding what we was saying near half the time.

  I got to telling again about how me and my friend Tom finally just upped and run away one day without telling no one, and Eeteh says he always wanted to do that, too, but the only friend who thought like him got caught and beheaded by white bounty hunters when he was out fishing. If he busted all on his lonesome into places where mostly white men was camped, they’d shoot him or lock him up, and if he crossed into where other tribes was, he could end up a slave or a human sacrifice. I didn’t know they done that, I says, and he says they did, some did. I sejested we could try Mexico where he’d match right in. I didn’t know nothing about it, but the Mexicans I’d met was mostly thieving rascals, liars and loafers, so we’d be comfortable in their company.

  That somehow led us to talking about the generl stupidness and meanness of the whole human race, and what a body was to do to survive amongst the vicious creturs. I guess our jabber was booming along out in the mainstream by then, even if we was still dragging all the old rubbage with us.

  I told him about the murdrous Fighting Parson, the Minnysota hangings, and General Hard Ass’s slaughter of all them families whilst they was sleeping. I says it was enough to make a body shamed of the whole human race. Eeteh nodded and showed me a scar he says he got from his own brother Rain-in-the-Face, and he told me then about the day him and his cousins tried to make a warrior out of him by fetching him along to the massacre of a wagon train of emigrants from the east. Settlers was swarming into the land of the Great Spirits like a mortal fever, his brother said, and to make the land pure again, the white devils had to be killed or drove out, ever last one of them. And all the nation, even fools, was obleeged to help do that. Them particular emigrants took to praying ruther than fighting back, and that throwed his cousins into an awful rage because they thought the emigrants was using magic against them, so they emptied out their guts, scalped them, and spiked them on spears stuck in the ground. Eeteh says he turned away from the sickly sight and his brother shot an arrow into his side. “He can kill me, Hahza, but only want hurt. Remember me who I belong.”