Huck Out West

by Robert Coover

  Tom had took a bath in the crick and washed his wounds afterwards with whisky. He was still bare-chested, oozing blood from the X the Cap’n had drawed there, but, like Becky, he also seemed to judge that air-baths was good for a body, and says he don’t want to leave the wounds to fester inside a shirt or bandages. Folks was still crowding round the gallows, telling each other about what they seen. They turned and hoorayed Tom from time to time, and he smiled like a bishop and waved back at them.

  “But our stories ain’t over yet, Hucky,” he says, using a tiny bird’s leg bone for a toothpick. He’d already et a couple a dozen birds, and he might a et more but the neck gristle was getting in his teeth. “We got a monstrous big day a-rolling up next month, the first sinteenery of the American Revolution! It’ll be a hundred years to the day since our rapscallion founding fathers let rip their Declaration and kicked all them royalist butts OUT a here! With their get-up-and-go owdaciousness, them young scoundrels got theirselves planted forever into the history books.”

  Old Deadwood was down in the street in his union suit, bouncing about, popping his fob watch open and snapping it shut. His union suit was more or less the color a the street. He spied Tom and come a-running towards him, his limbs flying in all directions, and then he seen me and scrambled away again, the trap door of his union suit flapping.

  “And now, a hundred years on, where can the sivilizing consequences of such get-up-and-go Americaness be most best seen? Why, right here in the Gulch, Hucky! We ARE America, clean to the bone! This is where the wonderfullest nation the world has ever seen is getting born! I BELIEVE that! It’ll be GREAT! A new land of freedom and progress and brotherhood! A perfect new Jerusalem right here on earth! And you and me are PART of it! It’s US that’s making it happen! That being so, we are obleeged to throw the best damn sinteenery party in the nation, which these Territories is directly going to be a natural part of! They call us outlaws because they say we’re on tribal land, so we got to show our amaz’n American PATRIOTICS! These lands is rightfully OURN and we’re going to set up a Liberty Pole and raise the American flag on it to PROVE it! I aim to have a parade and fireworks and rifle squads banging away all through the night so’s Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and all their dumb savages can hear it plain. Maybe we can even run a circus. I can rescue back your horse from the injuns and you can show off your bareback riding and your shooting and roping. They say Wild Bill is on his way here. If he gets here in time, maybe we can get him to do some fancy pistol tricks. I can’t manage all that by myself. I need you to help me, pard!”

  I told General Hard Ass a stretcher about Wild Bill so’s to save Tongo. If them two turned up here at the same time, I was in even more desperater trouble, if that was possible. “You got all them friends you come with. Ask them. Ask Bear.”

  “Bear ain’t got over the pison arrow jimjams. He’s out hugging trees again right now. And the others ain’t friends. I’m making them rich. When I can’t do that, they’ll find somebody else. It ain’t like you’n me, Hucky. We’re real pards. We can count on us, no matter what.” The cookie had brung us bowls of wild razberries in fresh cow milk, still warm from the udder. Tom lifted his bowl to his mouth, et it all down. “First of all,” he says, licking his moustaches off, “we need the best shooter in the Hills to lead our new Black Hills Brigade, and I allow that should oughter be you.”

  “LISTEN to me, Tom! General Hard Ass is left Fort Lincoln by now, and him and his army probably ain’t a day away from here. If he comes here and finds me, he HANGS me. I GOT to GO!”

  “Confound it, Huck, you shouldn’t never’ve got in trouble with that general in the first place.”

  “Couldn’t help it. He asked me to do things I warn’t able to do. I just ain’t fitten for the army life.”

  “All right, but keep your britches on. I know that jackanapes personal. His vixenish young wife has him wrapt round her little finger. He got court-martialed because he couldn’t stay away from her, the dog, and if I’d been persecuting him, he’d a wound up on the end of a rope. He’s a lecher and a crinimal. But I can manage the bugger.”

  “All your generals is the same to me. Ain’t a one a them wouldn’t want to hang me, and with every right to go and do it. I don’t NEED to keep on living, but if I WANT to, I got to get clear of them all.”

  “Hang it all, Hucky, it’s just too dangersome. A white man alone don’t stand a chance out there, specially now the Sioux War’s hotted up.”

  “I know it. I do wish I had somebody to travel with, but I don’t, so I ain’t got no choice.”

  “Well, it’s too bad about your Lakota friend, but, honest, Huck, I didn’t have nothing to do with that. Peewee got killed, too. I loved Peewee like a brother and I’m mighty afflicted by what happened. Nobody had no idea your friend was in there. You should a told us. But you can’t go now. Here, me’n you are together, and together we can lick anyTHING and anyBODY. It just don’t make no sense to go off on your lonesome and get scalped.”

  “I been out here on my lonesome for a stretch now. I got learnt a few western trades I can follow, and I can palaver a bit with some a the tribes. There’s a couple a fur trappers you and me used to know down a-near the Indian Territory. If I can get that far, maybe I can ride with them.”

  “But you’re going to be one a the richest men in the WORLD! You can BUY the blamed general! You can’t believe how RICH we are, Hucky! You’re my pard, I’m sharing EVERYTHING with you, just like we always done.”

  “Being rich don’t work for me, Tom.”

  “That’s plain stupid,” he says, getting mad.

  “Give it to Becky or Deadwood.”

  “You don’t give Deadwood money now. He don’t even know what it is. You just take care of him. I’m doing that. And I don’t need to give nothing to Becky, she’s grabbing all she wants. She’s aiming to turn the whole Gulch against me, if I don’t do like she says.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Well, the Gulch is a dangersome place. If she ain’t careful, she may have an accident.”

  The Chinaman cookie brung us some whisky. Tom drank his down the same furisome way he chawed up the burnt birds. I passed him my glass. He looked me over. “You’re still yallerer than our cookie. Ain’t the janders over yet?”

  “Comes and goes. I feel dog-tired all the time.”

  “Well, that’s another reason you can’t go. You ain’t healthy enough.” He drank down my whisky and rose up, causing a stir out in the street. “Come along now. I got a surprise for you.”

  As we stepped down off of the raised sidewalk, Tom was surrounded by grateful survivors of Cap’n Patch’s rain of terror. Some of them slapped his bare back or punched his arm, while others took off their hats and bowed their heads at him like he was the Awmighty. One a the new prostytutes who’d got horsewhipped by Eyepatch come over and give Tom a hug and kissed the X on his chest and says she’ll pray for him every night at bedtime, even if that’s at six in the morning. He was welcome to visit her any time at no charge once her awful wounds has healed, or even before if he wanted to see what that horrible pirate man done to her complexion.

  Deadwood come staggering and loping towards us, his broke jaw set on a lopsided grin. Then he seen me with his crossed eyes and fell over in the mud in his anxiousness to get away. “That old sourdough has a new yarn about how he got that way,” Tom says as we slopped along. “He says whilst he was taking a squat in the woods, there was a giant powder explosion that near busted his eardrums, and drove the shit right back up his arsehole. Says he ain’t had no relief since. The blast throwed him all the way here into the street, where this stinking muck saved his life. It was the dynymite done all the bone-twisting, he says. Falling into the mud was like landing on a pile a feathers.”

  “Glad to hear it’s good for something. Sure ain’t no joy in tracking round in it.”

  “We’ll have to lay in some brick streets,” Tom says. He had lots of plans like that. Gas lamps on poles.
Hitching posts. A newspaper. Stables to get the animals off the street. Tom can’t get up and NOT go. We passed a new brewery which he says he had some money in. “Also I’ve cleaned up the old whisky-maker’s copper worms and pot, so’s to try to still up a fresh batch from that yist mash you rescued. You got to admit, Huck, the Gulch is a better place now’n it ever was before.”

  Remembering what Becky told me, I asked him whatever become a my treasure money that I left with the judge, and he says, “I got it with me. Just tell me when you want it.”

  “I’ll take it now, then. See if I can’t buy me a train ticket to Mexico.”

  “Trains don’t go there. And anyways I AIN’T giving it to you to run away on. Look, here we are.”

  Where Tom had fetched me to was a place on a muddy hill slope overlooking the Gulch where the foundations for a house was being laid. “I’m building a fifteen-room mansion here, Huck. Ain’t nothing like it ever seen back in St. Petersburg. It’ll have colored glass windows and giant mirrors in rosewood frames, canopy beds with the finest horsehair mattresses and feather pillows, crystal shandy-leers and Paris wallpaper and China spittoons, even a most splendid bathroom with a French bathtub and a modern water closet like the one the Queen of England does her business on. I got a claim on nearly all Deadwood Gulch. People have to buy their lots from me, so I can pick and choose who my neighbors is. And I’m picking you, Huck! On that lot right there next to mine, I’m building a house just for you! It’ll have everything you need, even a barn out back for your horse and an ice box to keep your beer cold and a big bed for entertaining the ladies in! Four at a time if you like! I’ll find you some so’s you don’t get lonesome!”

  “Can’t afford nothing like that.”

  “One a the world’s richest men can afford whatever he wants, dang it. Anyways, I’m giving it to you free.”

  “I thought when we left St. Pete we was running away from all this sivilizing.”

  Tom looked awful disappointed. He looked like he always done back home when I didn’t answer him proper. It ain’t no use to talk to a numskull like you, he’d say. If I was as ignorant as you, Huck, I wouldn’t let on. I probably shouldn’t a said what I said about his house. It made me feel bad after all he was trying to do for me. But when I tried to thank him and say I was sorry, I couldn’t find the words for it.

  Instead, I left Tom with all his worshippers and hiked up to the rubble that once was a bat cave to say my good-byes to Eeteh. I let out a couple a owl hoots and listened with all my ears for an answer, but it was dead silent. A powerful sadfulness come over me. The Gulch warn’t tolerable for me no more, but I didn’t know where else to go or what to do. The trails all led to one fort or nuther, and the general had pals in all of them. Tom had found the things I’d stowed under my cot to travel with and took them all. I didn’t even have a horse. Tom had hung a lot of emigrants and some a them had horses I could borrow, but they warn’t none a them Tongos nor not even Jacksons.

  It warn’t long before Tom fetched up, toting along his rifle, as I reckoned he might. The light was fading into one a those long summer twilights. “Wyndell says you was up here,” he says. He had his shirt on again and he handled me Eeteh’s bloody vest, saying he thought I might be wanting to bury it up here with Eeteh’s remainders. I says there warn’t no advantage in burying nothing that only needs a wash, and Tom grinned and nodded at that. “Here, I also brung you the bear-claws that was round the Cap’n’s neck.”

  “I got that neckless from the tribe,” I says. “Maybe they liked me less’n I judged they did. They said it was for good luck and I give it to old Zeb, and you seen what it done for me’n him. Now your Cap’n’s lost his head. I sejest you don’t keep the neckless yourself nuther, but pass it on to General Hard Ass for me, since you know him so good.”

  He grunted, looking around. “I thought I heard an owl up here.”

  “There’s an old hoot owl lives in the crotch a that old Ponderosa over there,” I lied.

  Tom took aim and fired and a darkness left the crotch and a big old bird come crashing down, wings beating at the air. “Well, it won’t hoot no more,” he says, but he sounded disappointed. I reckoned Tom was as surprised as I was. It just showed, some stretchers can turn out true. “Becky’s turning mean, Hucky,” he says. “I just found out she’s trying to take the mansion away from me and it ain’t even builded yet! She wants to use it for a dad-blamed WHOREhouse! So I’m on my way back to the claim to talk it over with my consortium. I mainly clumb up here to tell you that. Wyndy’ll be looking after you. Whatever you want, just let him know. When I get back, we’ll talk more about our plans for the sinteenery.” It was like he hadn’t heard a thing.

  I give Tom time to clear out and then, while there was still enough light in the sky to see by, I stumbled back down the hill to our empty tent, feeling as condamned as when I was on the gallows with a rope round my neck. Couldn’t stay. Couldn’t go. Never felt so desperate ornery and low down.

  Peewee’s pards was still plasser mining down crickside. They warn’t just only swirling gravels round in a pan now, they’d contrived up an amazing rig of waterwheels and pumps, ditches and dams, flumes and sluce boxes. All for a few specks a trouble.

  Wyndy was posted outside the front flap like usual. He was into one of his mistical fits, so he must a been chawing or smoking something local. Talking with him was like talking with a wound-up music box. “The end is a-coming!” he was chanting in a singsong voice, his glazed-over eyes aimed up at the dimming sky. “The light’s a-going out! Repent! Repent! Whilst still you can!”

  I tore half a thigh off of the remainders of a young elk spitted over the fire and took it in the tent with me. I reckoned I was well enough to wash it down with samples from Tom’s new brewery which was setting about, so I laid down with the elk thigh and the beer and set to worrying over my perdicament. I only had a few hours before General Hard Ass might show up. I had to decide now what I was going to do. Maybe I should just give myself over to the general, I thought, and let him end my miserableness. I tried to think what Coyote would do or say, but then I remembered he warn’t no more, he was just a bunch of exploded new worlds scattered around out in the sky. Of course, he never WAS, but I knowed what I meant. I needed his advice and I warn’t going to get it. Whilst I was dreaming away about the Coyote who warn’t there, I seemed to see Snake grinning in a corner. But maybe not a corner in the tent, maybe a corner in that house Tom was a-building, nestling in the foundations. Snake laughed and says I’m a saphead, a numskull. I could hear the ghost of Coyote somewheres afar off, arguing with him. He was hooting at Snake like an owl, playing the fool. I heard the hoot again. Far away. Then again. I was wide awake. Warn’t Coyote! It was Eeteh!

  CHAPTER XXXI

  UTSIDE THE TENT, Wyndell was still wailing along about the Pocky Lips. He says everything was a-going to end by fire, nor else by floods, he couldn’t make up his mind. I pulled Eeteh’s ruined buckskin vest over my shirt, packed up in a saddlebag what was left of the roasted elk, a bottle of Tom’s whisky, and what traps and tinware and ammunition I could grab up, and slung it over my shoulder, my rifle and revolvers, too, took up a candle lantern and pocketed some matches and extra candles. Wyndy was most likely staring half-blind at the starry sky and I could foot it right past him, but I couldn’t resk him following me, so I used my old way of sneaking into circuses, squeezing out betwixt tent stakes at the back.

  It was a long ways to where the hoots was coming from, a different direction and further up into the Hills. The yaller janders didn’t make it no easier, but at least, once I got clear a the camp, I could hoot back to let him know I was coming. I followed the rattling rain-swoll crick, keeping my head down. Owls warn’t much for eating, but that didn’t stop people from shooting at them. When you got a gun, you use it on whatever chances by. It was a dangersome place at night, busy with drunks, thieves, and murderers, and they all had guns. A body could hear gunshots and cussing right up to the dawn racket,
when the sawing, hammering, and shouting got too noisy to hear nothing else.

  It was ever so lonely out along the crick in the dark and it got more lonelier the further a body tracked it, but Eeteh’s hoots cheered up the empty night. I was moving fast as I could towards them. If it warn’t for the janders and the darkness, I’d a been heeling it flat out. When I seen other lanterns in the hills moving through the trees like lightning bugs, I allowed I could light my own from time to time to show Eeteh where I was.

  Where I was was a most peculiar and unnatural place, and the further I got from the mining camp, the peculiarer it become. It didn’t seem like a place so much as a kind of time with stuff in it, stuff that kept on changing whenever a body looked t’other away. I can’t say where such scary thoughts come from, they warn’t common to me, maybe it was only because I was alone and afraid, but they made me wonder if that warn’t why folks fancied gold so much. Gold didn’t have no time lodged in it, it was just only what it was. But though it was a dead thing, the deadest thing of all, it acted like it was the livest thing of all, changing everything and everybody, and that was ever so peculiar, and scary, too. Living in the Gulch was like living in a wizzerd’s den.

  After about an hour, the hoots started getting clearer. He warn’t fur away. And the closer I got to him, the less stupid and spooky my thoughts was. But then, all of a sudden, an emigrant in a dark suit and crumpled derby come sliding out a the woods straight into my lantern light! Just when I was thinking about wizzerds! I fell back and raised my rifle. I didn’t want to shoot nobody, but there warn’t nothing going to stop me reaching Eeteh. He throwed off the derby and called out my Lakota name. It WAS Eeteh! It was the splendidest sight that ever was! I run to him and give him a hug and he give me a hug. Didn’t nuther of us want to let go. It was like we was hanging on to life itself. “I was sure you was dead!” I says.