Huck Out West

by Robert Coover

  I asked him when that was, if I was already living with the tribe, and what the settlers looked like. But stead of answering, Eeteh says how Coyote taught him the trick of seeing without seeing. He says Coyote took him to where the Great Spirits was celebrating their Every-Hundred-Moons People Slaughter. “I think more often,” Eeteh says, peeping out through the long black stringy hair hanging in his eyes and over his shoulders, “but Coyote call it that.” When him and Coyote got there, the Great Spirits was already hard at it, there was burnt and chopped-up flesh everywheres, and Coyote says to him to stare straight into the middle of it and tell him what he seen there. It was horrible, but he done what Coyote asked and told him what he seen, and Coyote says that’s not the middle, keep staring. So he done that and Coyote says that’s still not the middle, look harder. Eeteh says he was looking as hard as he could and he kept naming things and Coyote he kept saying that’s not the middle. Eeteh stopped like it was the end of his story, and relit his pipe. I asked him did he ever find it, the middle? He shrugged, shook his hair out of his eyes, took a pull on his pipe, let the smoke curl out through his heavy nose, and says, “No middle, Hahza. But I look so hard, middle not only nothing I not see.”

  I understood Eeteh pretty good, but Coyote was trickier. I thought we might be having difficulties by consequence of the different kinds of words we spoke, because after all Eeteh’s talk I still didn’t know nothing. But I judged it wouldn’t do no good to ask again, he warn’t going to say no more about that wagon train. Maybe he’d just made it all up to answer my own stories, you couldn’t never tell with Eeteh. But though Coyote taught him how not to see nothing, I was seeing too much. There warn’t no warrant for me to s’pose the wagon train in Eeteh’s story was the emigrant missionaires I was traveling with, but there warn’t no warrant not to, and my head was spinning in that direction, seeing things I most wanted not to see. I was specially worried and feeling bad about Jim. I had broke my promise to him. The worse thing is he probably forgive me.

  It had been a whole flock a moons, as Eeteh would say, since I bolted that wagon train without even no time, except for a last desperate shout to Jim to say goodbye. The first thing I noticed galloping off that night was I didn’t have no boots on. They was old and tattery with rundown heels and holes in the soles, but they was the only boots I had and I didn’t have no money to buy new ones. I shouldn’t never have took them off to wash my feet, but I done it and there warn’t no taking it back. I never wanted nothing on my feet, but a body couldn’t live out there without boots, so I was in a pickle, as Tom’s Aunt Sally used to say. But it was my fault, like it most always was. I shouldn’t noway have kept them boots. They was the ones Tom bought me with the money from selling Jim.

  I didn’t have no saddle neither, only the damp blanket I’d throwed over Jackson’s back after I washed him. It was like the old fellow was half-naked. He’d had that saddle since we left the Pony, and he wore it most days all day long till time to get washed and bedded down. We was both mighty uncomfortable without it, but we had to keep going. The oxes was slow, and even if the old pony didn’t have much left in him, the wagon train couldn’t catch us, but that rageous bullwhacker might try to chase me down and shoot me, if he could find him a horse and knowed how to ride one. I hoped that leastways I was shut of love once and for all, though that pretty hellion with the drippy cheeks had stirred up feelings that still clotted my chest like higher-up gas cramps.

  Clouds kept the moon hid and there warn’t no stars out to guide by. We was moving in the dark through grasslands that rolled off tedious and lonely in all directions, not knowing where we was going, just only away from that wagon train. In the middle of the night, my thoughts begun to float about, and when the old pony slowed to a mosey, I fell to sleep on his back. And soon as I did, there she was again, down on her knees and knuckles, sirring me in her sugary whisper, beguiling me all over again. It was a kind of nightmare and jolted me awake, but every time I closed my eyes, she come back like them devil women who drive all the widow’s saints so crazy. Can you help me, sir? I thought it was the widow who was the crazy one, but now I knowed better. One time when I come to, I seen that Jackson had stopped and was sleeping standing up, and we stood like that for a while, dozing off together with half-open eyes, until I thought I heard horse hoofs behind me, and I startled up and we pushed on again.

  At dawn, the thick clouds slowly lighted up a-front of us, then more paleness spreading round, signifying we’d been a-wandering east all night, so I bent Jackson northards towards the old beat-down emigrants’ trail. There was a few stray open-range cows scattered about, sejesting we was nigh water, cows needing barrels of it every day not to keel over and donate their bones to the landscape. There was also one human person out there, a scruffy fellow with a black beard, but he was dead, laying with his hands crossed over his belly and a sign pinned to his shirt that said HOSS THEIF. One of the unluckiest things a body can do is hive a dead man’s boots, specially those of thieves and murderers, but they was near my size and they was just crying out for needful feet like mine. I did not want to get shot as a BOOT THEIF, so I pulled them off him fast as I could and we hurried away, aiming for some rock formations I’d spied up ahead, rairing up on a low hill all by theirselves in the early morning light like giant thumbs and fingers.

  Bad luck can chase a body for years before it shows itself, but it can also strike a body down on the spot. This was most like what happened. There was a little stream below them stone pillars. I drank my fill and picketed Jackson near it, then pulled on the boots and walked around a while to get customed to them. That horse thief’s feet was bigger’n mine; I’d have to stuff some rags in the toes. I clumb up the little rise to the tall stones to see what I could see, and there in the valley on t’other side was an Indian camp. I most dropped in my tracks. They was all painted and feathered up and they was howling and stomping around like they was on the warpath, or maybe they was just praying in their savagely way. I went running back to the pony, hoping nobody seen me, but I warn’t watching where I was going and I trod straight on a rattlesnake nest. There was a bzzzt! at my heel and a sudden burning pain behind my knee and down I went, trying not to holler out.

  I knowed I was in desperate trouble. My leg was paralyzing up fast and the loose boot on it warn’t loose no more. I was so scared I most couldn’t think. I reckoned it was all up for me. And then, if things warn’t worse enough, one a them wild painted-up Indian warriors come at me and ripped my pants away with a knife and stabbed me in the leg. I thought he was going to scalp me, and I worried what that might feel like, but he leaned right in with his teeth where he cut me. I recollected what Tom said about them all being either cannibals or slaveholders, and I seen that this one was a cannibal who liked his meat direct off of the bone. I tried to fight him off, but I didn’t have no strength left. And then I didn’t have no thoughts left nuther.

  The first thing I seen when my eyes was opened was a grim old rip wearing a horned buffalo skull on his head, shaking some rattles and mumbling over me. It was steamy hot, minding me of the widow’s stories about where bad boys go when they die. Firelight was flickering on the domed hides above and somewheres there was a thumping sound, or maybe it was my own heart pounding, if I still had one. Then I seen that stringy-haired cannibal setting there, beating softly on a drum of stretched hide, his legs wrapped round it. I couldn’t feel nothing in the leg that got snakebit, so I allowed he must a et it. I was dead or dying and I only done it to myself, I couldn’t blame nobody else. I shouldn’t never have smouched nothing off of a dead horse thief, least of all his boots. When I done that, I stepped right into his bad luck. I knowed better, but knowing better don’t always help. Maybe it don’t never.

  The buffalo head seen me stirring and tried to shovel a spoonful of something from out of a clay bowl into my mouth. It looked like it might have shriveled fingers and deer scuts in it. I thought I might still be alive and he was trying to pison me, so I clinched my
teeth against him. A big native woman without no nose reached down and slapped my face. I held the old man off, but after the demon woman whopped my jaws a couple of licks, I decided I likely WARN’T alive, so it wouldn’t do me no harm to take it even if it WAS pison. It was even horribler’n I thought it would be, but I begun to feel a little better. My leg had swelled up and was a nasty color and it was hurting again, but leastways it was letting me know it was still there.

  I warn’t feeling too steady, so I closed my eyes again, and when I opened them, I was in a tepee and that cannibal with the long black hair was setting beside me. He was smoking something sweet and give me a pull off his pipe. He told me his long Lakota name and it was all a jumble to me, but the last part was “Eeteh,” and he says to call him that. He pointed to the lady who’d been slapping me and says she was now my wife. I didn’t know how that happened, but he says she’d be taking care of me, so maybe it come with the job. She also had a long name like Eeteh’s that I couldn’t never learn, but the first part was “Kiwi” and that’s what I called her. I was slowly getting my senses back, and knowed better what’d been happening. I thanked Eeteh and he shrugged and give me another pull on his pipe.

  CHAPTER XII

  T TOOK SOME while to clean out the snake pison, and meantimes, me and the tribe growed comfortabler with each other. None of them was happy I was there, but they seen I was mostly harmless, and I was Eeteh’s friend. I warn’t so afraid a them as before, though life with them warn’t never easy. They was forever pegging at a body to join them in jumping around and beating on theirselves as a way of putting their Great Spirits in a good mood, and there were more dismal strictions than when I was trapped in a house with stiff-necked old Miss Watson. Eeteh had calculated how to duck the warrior life by becoming a kind of clown, so they seen me as one, too. They used me for laughs, and there warn’t much Eeteh could do about it because they treated him the same. The no-nose lady was one joke and the horse was another. As Eeteh says, nobody’d ever managed to ride neither of them without considerable bruising, and most everybody had tried.

  Kiwi was a Crow lady the tribe had captured in a raid. She come with her nose still on, was took as the fourth or fifth wife of one of Eeteh’s older brothers to help with the weaving and back packing, then got her nose clipped for cheating on him, or else just for being difficult. She’d been living ever since with a couple of cranky old Lakota women, in-laws of some sort, and she was mostly glad to be shut of them. She didn’t speak no American, but she was good at sign language, specially when it included a whack or a punch. I generly stayed out of her way, sneaking off with Eeteh for a smoke and palaver, or setting outside the lodge in my new breechcloth, deerskin leggings, and moccasins, thinking about how Tom Sawyer would a wrote about this adventure and how he would make it turn out. I don’t think he would a thought up what happened next.

  Somebody decided I should ought to pay more attention to Kiwi, and ordered up a love potion from the medicine man. Like enough it was them two old busybody women who done it, but it seemed everybody knowed about it. When the medicine man come to see me in the lodge, most a the tribe had already gathered round outside. He warn’t wearing nothing but an old tattered elk hide and elk antlers on his head near as tall as he was. He pointed to where my old snake wound was and then at the potion. It warn’t hurting no more so I tried to shake him off, but he started hollering and wailing fit to bust. The tepee cover was rolled up and the people all round was shouting and carrying on like the wild savages that they was. Kiwi warn’t far away and I was afraid she might start swatting me again, so I swallowed the potion down. The medicine man begun to grin and then everybody was grinning.

  It was near as fatal as the rattler pison. My eyes stopped working together and my tongue flopped out and I broke into blisters from my neck to my knees. An awful itch was killing me and made it hard to keep my leggings or breechcloth on. I warn’t able to set nor lay down, I could only yip and whinny and kick out and bounce around like a startled-up rabbit. The medicine man started bouncing with me, and then all the others, too, kicking out when I kicked out, bouncing when I bounced, and fairly laughing their bones loose.

  I thought I seen that wagon train hellion coming after me. She was kicking and bouncing like the rest, but she was also dead still and tears was running down her pretty cheeks. Her nose was there and it warn’t there. Please help me, sir, she says, and she reached out with her roped hands to scratch my itch. Then she give me a blow that flattened me out and she jumped on me and all the others piled on top as well. The itch was driving me crazy and my eyes was wheeling around on their own, so I can’t say what happened after that, but it tired me most to death. I warn’t able to get up and walk again for three days.

  When they took me to ride the horse, I reckoned it was another mean joke, but Eeteh says even if it was, the horse was a gift and I couldn’t not take it without making the whole tribe mad. This animal warn’t no half-pint cow-pony. He was a big dark stallion, fifteen or sixteen hands tall, and so wild they had to fence him apart not to sicken the herd with his contrariness. They kept him in a corral made a poles and brush, and when I stepped into it, he raired up over my head and snorted and punched his hoofs at me like to box my jaws. I ducked back, feeling about six inches tall.

  He come with just a cinched pelt on him, no saddle or bridle, he wouldn’t tolerate them. What they wanted was for me to sivilize him by breaking his wild spirit. All I really wanted to do was open the gates and set him free, but that warn’t a choice I had. The tribe liked to say they warn’t crippling the animal when they broke it, but was welcoming him into the tribe as a trained warhorse and a fellow hunter, and I had to think like they thought. Which was the way the folks back in St. Petersburg most thought about me.

  The first thing was to lasso him round his neck and choke him out of his wind, throw him to the ground when he stopped fighting back, and get a halter on him. They call it gentling, but there ain’t nothing gentle about it. I thronged my lariat at him a dozen times, but he was ripping around the corral like the very nation, ducking his head under the rope when I flung it and whinnying like he was laughing at me.

  There warn’t nobody else laughing. Maybe the tribe was hee-hawing on the inside, I thought, but on the outside they was stiff as wooden totem poles. Then I seen it. The fear. They could a done to this horse what they done to old Jackson, but they was scared to. This stallion warn’t entirely of this world, that’s what they was thinking. Medicine dog. God dog. There might be dreadful consequences far beyond the eating of him. So this warn’t just a joke, then. They was using me for something else. I felt like one a them human sacrifices Eeteh was telling about.

  When I finally lassoed him, I did wish I hadn’t. He hauled me right up off my feet. I was flying behind him, trying to get my feet under me whenever I landed, not to bounce on my belly. I must a made a most comical sight, but there still warn’t nobody laughing. Eeteh come to help, grabbing onto the rope, and together we slowed the horse enough for Eeteh to somehow snub him to a post. The horse raired and pulled back with all his might like to bring the whole corral down, but the rope held and tightened round his neck. Both me and Eeteh suffered a power of mighty kicks, but we was finally able to cross-hobble him, roping his forefeet to a back foot. He stopped fighting us then, and just stood there snorting and looking sadful. I felt bad about it and hoped he wouldn’t hold it against me.

  Eeteh give me a thin rawhide thong. I’d watched the Lakota warriors on their horses, so I knowed what it was for. I had to loop it like a bridle over the horse’s lower jaw without getting my arm et, or I wouldn’t stand no chance of getting up on him so’s I could be throwed off again. He whipped his head round like he was trying to break my arm with it, but I managed to get the thong in his mouth and pulled tight round his neck.

  There warn’t no stirrups to jump into, no saddle horn to grab. That warn’t the tribe’s style. I kicked my moccasins off, grabbed the rawhide thong and a handful of his mane, and
swung aboard—and flew right off again, clean out of the corral. When that horse bucked a body, it was like what a cannon done to a cannonball.

  I decided I’d just take my licking and admit I was well beat. I was only a clown, I could do that. I stepped back in, knotted his mane round one fist while he was twisting and jumping round, pulled myself up on his back, dug in with my toes and told Eeteh to let the horse free, but before I could even get set, I was flying out of the corral again, scraping my stern on the fence posts as I sailed across them. A circus clown couldn’t a done it better.

  I warn’t feeling too brash when I staggered back in. I wanted to go set in front of the lodge again without doing nothing, but I knowed the tribe was all still waiting for me in their stern-faced way. I allowed getting throwed three times would have to be enough fun for everybody. I hoped I could live through it.

  The horse was a-galloping around free now, so I crawled up on the corral fence, waited for my moment, and jumped on his back as he thundered past. He tried to buck me off, but this time I hung on no matter how he ripped and tore and cavorted around. One minute I was up in the clouds, the next I was dropping straight to the devil. I don’t know how long it went on for, but it was the scariest and joyfullest ride I’d had since me and Jim, clinging to our raft for dear life, went a-booming down the Big River in a raging thunderstorm all them years ago.