Sundance, Butch and Me

by Judy Alter

  He shook his head as though to say "nothing."

  They talked between themselves for a bit, while I sat at that table, dazed now by what I'd done and the predicament I was in. At long last, I found my voice. "San Antonio," I said. "I want to go to San Antonio."

  Mr. Newsome whirled on me. "Why ever do you want to go there?"

  I couldn't explain about the traveler who stopped at our house or the tales I'd heard. I just shook my head and repeated, "San Antonio."

  Mrs. Newsome was silent for a bit, and then she said, "James, there's a train from Palestine to San Antonio. You hitch up the buggy and take this child to Palestine."

  "That's near fifty miles," he yowled. "Be noon tomorrow 'fore we get there, even if we start now." He yawned again.

  "Well," she said practically, "I can go if you want, and you stay here to open the store in the morning. Wouldn't do for both of us to be gone and have the store closed. Everybody, including the sheriff, would smell a rat then."

  "You can't go off to Palestine alone," he thundered. Then he had another thought. "How's she gonna pay for the train fare? And what's she gonna do when she gets there?"

  She shook her head. "I don't know the answers to those questions, but I know what we have to do. We can't let her stay here and be branded a murderer, just for defending herself."

  "You don't know he's dead!" Mr. Newsome countered.

  "I think he probably is," I said miserably. "He was bleeding pretty bad."

  Mr. Newsome gave me a long look, and I knew once again that I should have stopped to help Pa. There was no way to explain to another man what had happened or how I felt. "I have some money," I said. "Probably enough for the train."

  "And when you get to San Antonio?" Mrs. Newsome asked, and there was softness in her tone. She was protecting me, but she wasn't going to let me turn helpless.

  "I'll take care of myself," I said with more confidence than I felt.

  And that's what happened. Mr. Newsome had to get dressed in the middle of the night and hitch up his buggy to drive me to Palestine. It would be the afternoon of the next day when we got there.

  As we left Ben Wheeler, I wanted badly to throw my arms around Mrs. Newsome and thank her, but I was shy, held back maybe because I'd never known many people outside my own family.

  "Will you... will you see that Pa gets a decent burial, next to Mama and Ab?" I asked.

  She reached a hand to smooth my hair. "Yes, I will."

  "And...?"

  "And we won't either one say anything about having seen you tonight. James simply had to go to Palestine for supplies for the store."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "Because there are some things no one should be allowed to do and get away with. You aren't a bad person, Martha Baird. You were just put in a bad place." She turned to her husband. "In the morning, I'll mention to the sheriff that Ephraim Baird's horse wandered into town without a rider. I expect he'll go out there and find the man fell on his own knife and killed himself... by accident, of course."

  For years afterward I remembered her words: You aren't a bad person, Martha Baird.

  I never ever went back to Ben Wheeler, never went to see those three graves out there on that poor patch of land. I wrote Mrs. Newsome, once I was settled in San Antonio, and told her that I was all right. But how I got settled is another story.

  Chapter 3

  Mr. Newsome was plainly nervous about me. When it was dark, we rode in silence, casting sideways glances at each other from time to time. Sometimes I dozed off, sitting upright on the bouncing seat of the buckboard, but then Pa's face would swim before me, and I'd jerk myself back to the present.

  Mama had died in the middle of July. It was now early August, the hottest time of the year in East Texas. The air was heavy, muggy, seeming to sit like a bale of cotton on my chest as we rattled over the rutted roads. Daybreak was always the coolest moment, and yet even it was hot and discouraging that morning. When it began to turn light, I could see that sweat ran out from under Mr. Newsome's hat—he wore a derby, like a city man—and I could feel beads of wetness on my upper lip and forehead. But his team forged ahead, slowly but steadily taking me toward a future that loomed blank and empty.

  "Sure is hot, isn't it?" he finally said with forced good nature.

  "Yes it is," I answered. I'd never been around enough people to be good at making conversation, though I could talk to Mama for hours.

  He looked ahead at the road for a long spell. Then, finally, he turned to me. "Why'd you do it? Couldn't you... couldn't you have done somethin' else, anything?"

  "No," I said. I wanted to cry out, tell him how awful it was and how wrong of Pa. But I didn't. He wouldn't have believed anyway, and I suspected he took Pa's part.

  But then he surprised me.

  "What your pa did is... well, it's the worst thing I can think of a man doin', and I'm holdin' no brief for him. But to kill a man..."

  "I didn't want to kill him," I said fiercely. "I didn't mean to.... I just wanted to be sure he'd leave me alone." I bit my lip to keep from crying, lest he think I was using tears to get sympathy.

  "There, girl, you don't have to get mad at me. I think I understand, just don't know how a girl like you is gonna live with this on her conscience. How're you gonna make a living? 'Course, there's some things a woman can do..."

  I had no idea what he was talking about, fortunate thing that was! "Pardon me?"

  "Well, you know, in San Antonio. What you plan to do?"

  "I'm a fair hand at keeping house," I said. "Mama taught me to cook and clean... and I can read and cipher. I reckon somebody'll want help."

  "You may find in San Antonio..." He left the sentence unfinished, though after a minute he took a different tack: "Dressed like you are, you look like a schoolgirl."

  "Mama taught me at home," I told him, "but I'm of an age to be in school." Naively I took it as a compliment that I looked like a schoolgirl.

  "Well," he drawled, "you might just do better in San Antonio if you looked a little older. You know, different kind of dress." I looked at the new muslin dress I was wearing, a ready-made that Mrs. Newsome had insisted I have before we left.

  "Well," he said, "you know... silk might be better." Then he added hastily, "But don't you ever tell Mrs. Newsome I said that."

  I thought it was a strange conversation, and we didn't talk much for a long while. In midmorning we stopped under some trees and ate the biscuits and cheese Mrs. Newsome had sent, and by early afternoon we were in Palestine. Mr. Newsome found a saloon that served food, and after being sure I had money to pay for my own meal, ordered us greasy steak and potatoes. I picked at it but didn't eat much.

  "Might be you don't know where your next meal's coming from," he said. "Ought to eat while you can."

  But I continued to pick.

  The train ticket took all but two dollars of the money I had and brought the discouraging news that the train wouldn't leave until midnight.

  "You her pa?" the station agent asked Mr. Newsome.

  "No... no, I'm not," that man answered nervously. "Uh... family friend. Just brought her to the train. Now, Martha, you curl up on that bench yonder and have a nap. I got to head on back."

  I nodded, glad to be rid of him, and watched as he walked away, throwing me a nervous look over his shoulder. Then he hesitated, stopped a moment, and turned toward the ticket window. As I watched curiously, I heard him ask, "Got a pen and a piece of paper?"

  The clerk nodded and supplied the items. Mr. Newsome wrote hastily, handed the pen back, and then came toward me.

  "Here, girl, you take this. You go see this woman... tell her I asked her to look out for you." He handed me the scrap of paper; on it was written "Mrs. Fannie Porter, 505 San Saba, with regards from James Newsome."

  I took it and stared at him, wondering what it meant.

  "But don't you ever tell Mrs. Newsome I gave you that name," he said, his voice so stern that I thought a threat crept into it.

 
"No, sir, I won't," I said. And then he was really gone, while I sat and held the paper. The station agent came to check on me once I settled down on a bench. It was hard and uncomfortable, and my small bag of clothes made a lumpy pillow. But I was exhausted and almost asleep when I heard a deep voice ask, "Where you from, miss?"

  Sitting bolt upright, I found myself face-to-face with the agent, who had hunkered down so that he was at my level. "Uh, what?"

  "Where you from?" he repeated, somewhat insistently.

  My mind raced, and I knew that Ben Wheeler was the wrong answer. "Marshall," I said. "I'm from Marshall."

  "That's good," he said, rising again to his full height. "Word came in over the wire 'bout some man from Ben Wheeler being found dead and his daughter missing. Didn't think that would be you, what with that family friend that brought you here and all."

  "No, sir," I said with a forced laugh, "that wouldn't be me." I held my breath from then until the train finally arrived.

  "All 'board" were the sweetest words I'd ever heard, though I was such a newcomer to trains—and to the world outside Ben Wheeler—that I barely knew what to do, how to behave. Timidly I chose a seat by a window and then waited breathlessly to see if I would be asked to move—maybe someone had a reserved seat?—or if some terribly unpleasant or nosy person would sit next to me. Tired as I was, sleep wouldn't come. The seats were prickly and uncomfortable, and the train was noisy, its great engine belching out a loud mournful sound at each road it crossed. Sometimes I would just begin to doze when the train lurched mightily and I was thrown awake again.

  But it was mostly Pa that kept me awake. Now that I knew for sure he was dead—the stationmaster had confirmed it for me—I felt a terrible guilt. His face swam before me, and I heard him say over and over, "You've killed me." I was convinced that Pa—and that awful expression on his face, a mixture of surprise and horror—would haunt me the rest of my life.

  I tried to call Mama's face up, but she never seemed as real to me as Pa, and I couldn't fathom Mama's reaction. She would have been horrified at what Pa had done, angry beyond belief and beyond her usual manner, but she would never have killed anyone. If that had been in her, I believed Pa would have been dead a long time ago. That conclusion made me think that probably I was more my father's daughter, prone to violence and wild behavior, than my mother's. And that was a sad thought, but I think it was one that right then began to shape my life. I was not as Mr. Newsome hinted, fit to be with ordinary house folk.

  Finally I slept fitfully, waking off and on, once when I thought I heard Ab calling me as though he were in pain. Then I stared out the window the rest of the trip and practiced making my mind blank of any thought except the resolve that I would not cry and I would not spend my life seeing Pa's face before my eyes.

  * * *

  San Antonio was a puzzle to me, so different from East Texas that I could hardly believe I hadn't traveled days to get there. The size was one thing—in Ben Wheeler, I could stand at one edge of town and see the other end, but here the city stretched beyond me in every direction I looked, some of its streets paved, many still dirt. The paved streets usually had electric streetlights, the first I'd ever seen, and when the first electric trolley clanged by me on Commerce Street, ringing its bell, I must have jumped a foot. The thing ran on little metal tracks that were sunk into the brick of the street, but I couldn't see how it would stay on those tracks. At least it didn't go as fast as the railroad train.

  Clutching Mr. Newsome's slip of paper in one hand and my bundle of clothes in the other, I began to walk aimlessly, partly searching for San Saba Street but mostly wondering at the city and its people, feeling suddenly as though I'd left Ben Wheeler far behind me. Reluctant to ask directions for fear someone would jump out and say, "You're the girl from Ben Wheeler, aren't you?" I naively believed that I'd come upon San Saba Street if I just kept walking. How big, I thought, can this place be?

  Wandering first in one direction and then another, I passed fine large homes, so big that I thought surely several families must live in them, and then I passed small brown homes—I didn't recognize adobe—that looked substantial but poor. People had built strange fences around them, with small branches or limbs running straight up from the ground close together instead of rails lying across posts like a fence ought to be. These fences were all skinny tall posts.

  The people were different, too. More of them, of course, than in Ben Wheeler. But there I'd known what the people looked like—everyone sort of looked like everyone else, though some had dark hair like me and others were fair like Mama and Ab. In San Antonio I saw Mexicans with black hair and flashing eyes and dark, rich-looking skin, and I saw a good number of fairly fat, light-haired men, with intense blue eyes, and many with blond beards on their faces.

  There were policemen everywhere I turned, it seemed, and soldiers, men walking singly or in groups, or men and women together. But no women alone, none that I could approach safely and ask the way to San Saba Street.

  Once I looked at the street numbers—I don't even remember what street I was on—but there were 2709 and 2711, and I thought I must have come a long way past my destination.

  Another time, in what was obviously the Mexican part of town with those small brown houses, strange fences and bare dirt in the yards, I saw a woman sitting outside as though she were sunning herself. She was wearing a faded dress but was wrapped, even in the August heat, in a colorful shawl.

  "I—Can you tell me where San Saba Street is?" I asked.

  She smiled happily at me and murmured something in Spanish, but of course I had no idea what she was saying.

  People in this part of town stared at me, for I was obviously an outsider, but their looks were neither angry nor distrustful. A group of children playing mumblety-peg in the dirt stopped to look up at me, and one shyly said something, though the only word I caught was "senorita."

  No sense asking them about San Saba Street, I thought as I waved a hand at them. A part of me wanted to kneel down in the dirt and ask for a turn. But I had never played mumbletypeg with other children—only Ab.

  Finally I came to a market square, with men and women behind stalls of fruits and vegetables, each one calling out loudly how fresh their goods were. Some called in English and some in Spanish, and the resulting chorus echoed in my ears like nonsense. I picked one stall where a Mexican woman was selling some sort of food I didn't recognize and loudly proclaiming, in English, that hers were the best in town.

  "Excuse me, can you tell me where San Saba Street is?"

  "San Saba Street?" She nearly shrieked. "No, you not go to San Saba Street." She shook her head back and forth firmly. The man in the booth—her husband, of course—spoke firmly to her in Spanish, and she answered him in a staccato that suggested she was giving him a tongue-lashing.

  The man prevailed. "You wish to go to San Saba Street?" he asked politely in heavily accented English.

  I nodded.

  "It's west of the creek, San Pedro Creek," he said. "Here, I draw you picture in the dirt." He took a stick and began to draw, explaining carefully. But he never explained the woman's reaction, and I understood only later that San Saba was the street of whores.

  It turned out I was only five or six blocks from San Saba, and I found it with ease, carrying the man's stick picture in my mind. Once on San Saba I had only to go another two blocks until I stood before number 505.

  It was a large two-story house, not as grand as those I'd seen when I'd wandered south of the business district, but still a substantial house. Square in shape, it was covered with stucco—to me, of course, it looked like the adobe houses I'd seen earlier, though lighter in color and different in shape. There was a freshly painted picket fence around it and some grass in the front yard, even a shrub or two. While it wasn't exactly inviting, it did look as though a solid family lived there.

  Then I remembered Mr. Newsome's nervousness and the fact that he hadn't referred me to Mr. and Mrs. Porter, but to Mrs. Fanni
e Porter, obviously an unmarried lady. And then there was the screeching Mexican lady in the market. Something was obviously different about this house and this street. I looked around, but the neighboring houses looked about the same—solid, substantial, not fancy.

  I must have stood a long time, looking, gathering my courage, because when I finally approached the front door, with its impressive oval inset of cut glass, the door swung open before I could knock.

  "Yes, miss?" A black man in a dark suit, high starched white collar, and white gloves made a semibow in front of me. Now, we had blacks in East Texas, and I was even on a "Howdy" basis with one or two families who lived around Ben Wheeler, but they never dressed like that!

  "I'd like to see Mrs. Fannie Porter," I said as firmly as I could.

  The corners of his mouth twitched just slightly. "Yes, ma'am," he said. "Please come in."

  I entered a narrow hall with dark wood paneling—wainscoting—halfway up the walls and paper patterned with red velvet above that. Above me was a chandelier, with hundreds of pieces of glass that gave off a sort of sparkling light.

  The man said, "This way, miss," and showed me through a curtained door—more red velvet—into a parlor. There was still more red velvet and two more chandeliers, but what puzzled me was the number of small sofas all around the room, each looking like they held two people. At one end was a small bar, bigger and much fancier than the one in the saloon Pa had frequented in Ben Wheeler, and a white piano with gold flowers and curlicues painted on it.

  I perched on the edge of a straight chair near the door and studied the room. It was not a room where a family lived, that was for sure! It seemed forever that I waited, but it probably wasn't more than five minutes. Once I got up and peeked through the door. With no one in sight, I was so bold as to look into the room across the hall. It was almost identical to the one where I waited. I went back and sat on my chair.

  Then a woman came through the swagged curtains that only partially covered the doorway. She was no taller than I but a big woman, not fat or badly proportioned, but generous. Her hair was light, like Mama's, but instead of pulled severely back from her face like Mama's, hers was fashioned in a great roll around the upper part of her face. It gave her height and a certain dignity, which was emphasized by her dress of voile, with silver and pink stripes going up and down—rather than around, where they would have called attention to a certain roundness about Mrs. Fannie Porter. My eyes were drawn again and again to the gold watch she wore on a slim gold chain around her neck. It was the first piece of real jewelry I'd ever seen, and I wanted one just like it so badly that the want was almost an ache.