Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

by Lonesome Dove

  Having no wish to embarrass the man, Augustus had written him in as "P. E.

  Parker, Wrangler." He had wanted to list him as a blacksmith, since in truth Pea was a superior blacksmith and only an average wrangler, but Pea Eye thought he could sit a horse as well as anyone and didn't wish to be associated publicly with a lower trade.

  Newt recognized that he was rightly too young to have his name on the sign and never suggested the possibility to anyone, though it would have pleased him mightily if someone had suggested it for him. No one did, but then Deets had to wait nearly two years before his name appeared on the sign, and Newt resigned himself to waiting too.

  Of course, it had not occurred to Augustus to put Deets's name on, Deets being a black man. But when Pea's name was added there was a lot of discussion about it, and around that time Deets developed a tremendous case of the sulks-- unlike him and perplexing to Call. Deets had ridden with him for years, through all weathers and all dangers, over country so barren they had more than once had to kill a horse to have meat, and in all those years Deets had given cheerful service.

  Then, all because of the sign, he went into a sulk and stayed in it until Augustus finally spotted him looking wi/lly at it one day and figured it out.

  When Augustus told Call about his conclusion, Call was further outraged. "That damn sign's ruint this outfit," he said, and went into a sulk himself. He had known Augustus was vain but would never have suspected Deets or Pea of such a failing.

  Of course Augustus was happy to add Deets's name to the sign, although, as in the case of Pea, there was some trouble with the particulars.

  Simply writing "Deets" on the sign didn't work. Deets couldn't read either, but he could see that his name was far too short in comparison with the others. At least it was short in comparison with the other names on the sign, and Deets wanted to know why.

  "Well, Deets, you just got one name," Augustus said. "Most people got two. Maybe you've got two and just forgot one of them." Deets sat around thinking for a day or two, but he could not remember ever having another name, and Call's recollection bore him out.

  At that point even Augustus began to think the sign was more trouble than it was worth, since it was turning out to be so hard to please everyone. The only solution was to think up another name to go with Deets, but while they were debating various possibilities, Deets's memory suddenly cleared.

  "Josh," he said, one night after supper, to the surprise of everyone. "Why, I'm Josh. Can you write that, Mr. Gus?" "Josh is short for Joshua," Augustus said. "I can write either one of them. Joshua's the longest." "Write the longest," Deets said. "I'm too busy for a short name." That made no particular sense, nor were they ever able to get Deets to specify how he happened to remember that Josh was his other name. Augustus wrote him on the sign as "Deets, Joshua," since he had already written the "Deets." Fortunately Deets's vanity did not extend to needing a title, although Augustus was tempted to write him in as a prophet--it would have gone with the "Joshua," but Call had a fit when he mentioned it.

  "You'll have us the laughingstock of this whole county," Call said. "Suppose somebody come up to Deets and asked him to prophesy?" Deets himself thought that was an amusing prospect. "Why, I could do it, Captain," he said. "I'd prophesy hot and I'd prophesy dry and I'd charge 'em a dime." Once the names were settled the rest of the sign was a simple matter. There were two categories, things for rent and things for sale. Horses and rigs were available for rental, or at least horses and one rig, a spring buggy with no springs that they had bought from Xavier Wanz after his wife, Therese, had got smashed by it. For sale Augustus listed cattle and horses. As an afterthought he added, "Goats and Donkey's Neither Bought nor Sold," since he had no patience with goats and Call even less with donkeys. Then, as another afterthought, he had added, "We Don't Rent Pigs," which occasioned yet another argument with Call.

  "Why, they'll think we're crazy here when they see that," he said. "Nobody in their right mind would want to rent a pig. What would you do with a pig once you rented it?" "Why, there's plenty of useful tasks pigs can do," Augustus said. "They could clean the snakes out of a cellar, if a man had a cellar. Or they can soak up mud puddles.

  Stick a few pigs in a mud puddle and pretty soon the puddle's gone." It was a burning day, and Call was sweated down. "If I could find anything as cool as a mud puddle I'd soak it up myself," he said.

  "Anyhow, Call, a sign's a kind of a tease," Augustus said. "It ought to make a man stop and consider just what it is he wants out of life in the next few days." "If he thinks he wants to rent a pig he's not a man I'd want for a customer," Call said.

  The caution about pigs ended the sign to Augustus's satisfaction, at least for a while, but after a year or two had passed, he decided it would add dignity to it all if the sign ended with a Latin motto. He had an old Latin schoolbook that had belonged to his father; it was thoroughly battered from having been in his saddlebags for years. It had a few pages of mottoes in the back, and Augustus spent many happy hours poring over them, trying to decide which might look best at the bottom of the sign.

  Unfortunately the mottoes had not been translated, perhaps because by the time the students got to the back of the book they were supposed to be able to read Latin. Augustus had had only a fleeting contact with the language and had no real opportunity to improve his knowledge; once he had been caught in an ice storm on the plains and had torn out a number of pages of the grammar in order to get a fire started. He had kept himself from freezing, but at the cost of most of the grammar and vocabulary; what was left didn't help him much with the mottoes at the end of the book. However, it was his view that Latin was mostly for looks anyway, and he devoted himself to the mottoes in order to find one with the best look. The one he settled on was Uva uvam vivendo varia fit, which seemed to him a beautiful motto, whatever it meant. One day when nobody was around he went out and lettered it onto the bottom of the sign, just below "We Don't Rent Pigs." Then he felt that his handiwork was complete. The whole sign read: HAT CREEK CATTLE COMPANY AND LIVERY EMPORIUM

  CAPT. AUGUSTUS MCCRAE: PROPS.

  CAPTAIN W. F. CALL: PROPS.

  P. E. PARKER: WRANGLER DEETS, JOSHUA FOR RENT: HORSES AND RIGS FOR SALE: CATTLE AND HORSES GOATS AND DONKEY'S NEITHER BOUGHT NOR SOLD WE DON'T RENT PIGS.

  UVA UVAM VIVENDO VARIA FIT.

  Augustus didn't say a word about the motto, and it was a good two months before anybody even noticed it, which showed how unobservant the citizens of Lonesome Dove really were. It galled Augustus severely that no one appreciated the fact that he had thought to write a Latin motto on a sign that all visitors could see as they rode in, though in fact those riding in took as little note of it as those already in, perhaps because getting to Lonesome Dove was such a hot, exhausting business. The few people who accomplished it were in no mood to stop and study erudite signs.

  More galling still was the fact that no member of his own firm had noticed the motto, not even Newt, from whom Augustus expected a certain alertness. Of course two members of the firm were totally illiterate--three, if he chose to count Bolivar--and wouldn't have known Latin from Chinese.

  Still, the way they casually treated the sign as just part of the landscape caused Augustus to brood a good deal about the contempt that familiarity breeds.

  Call did finally notice the motto one day, but only because his horse happened to throw a shoe across the road from the sign. When he got down to pick up the shoe he glanced over and noticed some curious writing below the part about pigs. He had a notion that the words were Latin but that didn't explain what they were doing on the sign.

  Augustus was on the porch at the time, consulting his jug and keeping out of the way.

  "What the hell did you do now?" Call asked. "Wasn't the part about the pigs bad enough for you? What's the last part say?" "It says a little Latin," Augustus said, undisturbed by his partner's surly tone.

  "Why Latin?" Call asked. "I thought it was Greek you knew." "I did know my letter
s once," he said. He was fairly drunk, and feeling melancholy about all the sinking he had done in the world. Throughout the rough years the Greek alphabet had leaked out of his mind a letter at a time--in fact, the candle of knowledge he had set out with had burned down to a sorry stub.

  "So what's it say, that Latin?" Call asked.

  "It's a motto," Augustus said. "It just says itself." He was determined to conceal for as long as possible the fact that he didn't know what the motto meant, which anyway was nobody's business. He had written it on the sign--let others read it.

  Call was quick to see the point. "You don't know yourself," he said. "It could say anything. For all you know it invites people to rob us." Augustus got a laugh out of that. "The first bandit that comes along who can read Latin is welcome to rob us, as far as I'm concerned," he said. "I'd risk a few nags for the opportunity of shooting at an educated man for a change." After that, the argument about the motto, or the appropriateness of the sign as a whole, surfaced intermittently when there was nothing else to argue about around the place. Of the people who actually had to live closest to the sign, Deets liked it best, since in the afternoon the door it was written on afforded a modest spot of shade in which he could sit and let his sweat dry.

  No one else got much use out of it, and it was unusual to see two horsemen on a hot afternoon stop and read the sign instead of loping on into Lonesome Dove to wet their dusty gullets.

  "I guess they're professors," Dish said. "They sure like to read." Finally the men trotted on around to the barn. One was a stocky red-faced man of about the age of the Captain; the other was a tiny feist of a fellow with a pocked face and a big pistol strapped to his leg. The red-faced man was obviously the boss.

  His black horse was no doubt the envy of many a man. The little man rode a grulla that was practically swaybacked.

  "Men, I'm Wilbarger," the older man said.

  "That's a damned amusing sign." "Well, Mr. Gus wrote it," Newt said, trying to be friendly. It would certainly please Mr. Gus that somebody with a liking for signs had finally come along.

  "However, if I had a mind to rent pigs I'd be mighty upset," Wilbarger said. "A man that likes to rent pigs won't be stopped." "He'd be stopped if he was to show up here," Newt said, after a bit. Nobody else spoke up and he felt that Wilbarger's remark demanded an answer.

  "Well, is this a cow outfit or have you boys run off from a circus?" Wilbarger asked.

  "Oh, we cow a little," Pea said. "How much cowing are you likely to need." "I need forty horses, which it says on that sign you sell," Wilbarger said. "A dern bunch of Mexicans run off dern near all of our remuda two nights back. I've got a herd of cattle gathered up the other side of the Nueces, and I don't plan to walk 'em to Kansas on foot. A feller told me you men could supply horses. Is that true?" "Yep," Pea Eye said. "What's more, we can even chase Mexicans." "I've got no time to discuss Mexicans," Wilbarger said. "If you gentlemen could just trot out about forty well-broke horses we'll pay you and be on our way." Newt felt a little embarrassed. He was well aware that forty horses was out of the question, but he had hated to come right out and say so. Also, as the youngest member of the outfit, it was not his responsibility to be the spokesman.

  "You best talk to the Captain about it," he suggested. "The Captain handles all the deals." "Oh," Wilbarger said, wiping the sweat off his brow with his forearm. "If I'd noticed a captain I'd have picked him to talk to in the first place, instead of you circus hands. Does he happen to live around here?" Pea pointed at the house, fifty yards away, in the chaparral.

  "I expect he's home," he said.

  "You men oughta publish a newspaper," Wilbarger said. "You're plumb full of information." His pockmarked companion found the remark wonderfully funny. To everyone's surprise, he let out a cackle of a laugh, like the sound a hen might make if the hen were mad about something.

  "Which way's the whorehouse?" he asked, when he finished his cackle.

  "Chick, you're a sight," Wilbarger said, and turned his horse and trotted off toward the house.

  "Which way's the whorehouse?" Chick asked again.

  He was looking at Dish, but Dish had no intention of revealing Lorena's whereabouts to an ugly little cowboy on a swaybacked horse.

  "It's over in Sabinas," Dish said matter-of-factly.

  "Which?" Chick asked, caught a little off guard.

  "Sabinas," Dish repeated. "Just wade the river and ride southeast for about a day. You'll likely strike it." Newt thought it extremely clever of Dish to come out with such a remark, but Chick clearly didn't appreciate the cleverness. He was frowning, which tensed his small face up and made his deep pockmarks look like holes that went clear through his cheeks.

  "I didn't ask for no map of Mexico," he said. "I've been told there's a yellow-haired girl right in this town." Dish slowly got to his feet. "Well, just my sister," he said.

  Of course it was a rank lie, but it got the job done. Chick was not convinced by the information, but Wilbarger had ridden off and left him, and he was conscious of being outnumbered and disliked. To imply that a cowboy's sister was a sporting woman might lead to prolonged fisticuffs, if not worse--and Dish Boggett looked to be a healthy specimen.

  "In that case some fool has tolt me wrong," Chick said, turning his horse toward the house.

  Pea Eye, who liked to take life one simple step at a time, had not appreciated the subtleties of the situation.

  "Where'd you get a sister, Dish?" he asked.

  Pea's mode of living was modeled on the Captain's. He barely went in the Dry Bean twice a year, preferring to wet his whistle on the front porch, where he would be assured of a short walk to bed if it got too wet. When he saw a woman it made him uncomfortable; the danger of deviating from proper behavior was too great. Generally when he spotted a female in his vicinity he took the modest way and kept his eyes on the ground. Nonetheless, he had chanced to look up one morning as they were trailing a herd of Mexican cattle through Lonesome Dove. He had seen a yellow-haired girl looking out an open window at them. Her shoulders were bare, which startled him so that he dropped a rein. He had not forgotten the girl, and he occasionally stole a glance at the window if he happened to be riding by. It was a surprise to think she might have been Dish's sister.

  "Pea, when was you born?" Dish asked, grinning at Newt.

  The question threw Pea inffconfusion. He had been thinking about the girl he had seen in the window; to be asked when he was born meant stopping one line of thought and trying to shift to another, more difficult line.

  "Why you'd best ask the Captain that, Dish," he said mildly. "I can't never remember." "Well, since we got the afternoon off I believe I'll take a stroll," Dish said.

  He ambled off toward town.

  The prospect of getting to go with the men that night kept crowding into Newt's mind.

  "Where do you go when you go down south?" he asked Pea, who was still ruminating on the subject of his own birth.

  "Oh, we just lope around till we strike some stock," Pea said. "The Captain knows where to look." "I hope I get to go," Newt said.

  Deets clapped him on the shoulder with a big black hand.

  "You in a hurry to get shot at, my lord," he said. Then he walked over and stood looking down into the unfinished well.

  Deets was a man of few words but many looks.

  Newt had often had the feeling that Deets was the only one in the outfit who really understood his wishes and needs. Bolivar was kind from time to time, and Mr. Gus was usually kind, though his kindness was of a rather absentminded nature. He had many concerns to talk and argue about, and it was mostly when he got tired of thinking about everything else that he had the time to think about Newt.

  The Captain was seldom really harsh with him unless he made a pure mess of some job, but the Captain never passed him a kind word, either. The Captain did not go around handing out kind words--but if he was in the mood to do so Newt knew he would be the last to get one. No compliment ever came to him from the Captain, n
o matter how well he worked. It was a little discouraging: the harder he tried to please the Captain, the less the Captain seemed to be pleased. When Newt managed to do some job right, the Captain seemed to feel that he had been put under an obligation, which puzzled Newt and made him wonder what was the point of working well if it was only going to irritate the Captain. And yet all the Captain seemed to care about was working well.

  Deets noticed his discouragement and did what he could to help pick his spirits up. Sometimes he helped out with jobs that were too much for Newt, and whenever a chance for complimenting a piece of work came, Deets paid the compliment himself. It was a help, though it couldn't always make up for the feeling Newt had that the Captain held something against him.