Zeke and Ned

by Larry McMurtry

  “And you stand by her, too!” she added. “She’s just a girl. You stand by her, Ned!”

  “Why, Becca . . . I mean to,” Ned said, astonished and a little frightened by her vehemence.

  “I mean to stand by her,” he said, again.

  But Becca Proctor did not hear him. She burst into tears, turned, and hurried back toward her house.

  19

  WHEN DAVIE BECK LEARNED THAT HE HAD MISSED A CHANCE TO kill Ned Christie, he immediately ran outside the mill and began to beat his brother Willy as he would beat a cur. White Sut Beck had pounded his runaway bear with a fence post until the fence post broke in two. Davie Beck picked up half the post, and laid Willy out with it, looked upon by Frank Beck and Little Ray Beck and old Roy Tagus, the trader who had brought the news. Old Roy traveled around the District selling sewing needles and sharpening kitchen knives. He also sharpened harrows, rakes, axes, posthole diggers, hatchets, and any other tool that needed to have a sharp edge in order to perform as it should. Old Roy was almost as old as White Sut, but he was far less wild, and the sight of Davie beating his brother with a fence post caused his stomach to churn.

  “He was right there asleep under a bush!” Davie yelled. “If you’d kept your eyes open, we could have caught the son-of-a-bitch and cut his head off.”

  “White Sut offered me a dollar for the head,” he reminded Willy bitterly, who did not hear the reminder.

  “Well, that’s what they say in Tahlequah, at least,” old Roy said. “I didn’t see Ned myself.”

  He was wondering if it had been wise to call at the Beck mill. He had once done a brisk business with Polly Beck, but Polly was dead, and her in-laws unpredictable. Davie Beck was not the sort of man to worry about whether the knives were sharp; he would be just as happy to stab an enemy with a dull one, if the enemy was handy.

  Now he had caused a flood of blood to pour out of his brother’s nose, due to the fact that an enemy had been handy, but had got away.

  “You should have kept your goddamn eyes open!” Davie yelled, standing over Willy, whose eyes were closed at the moment, due to the unfortunate fact that he was unconscious. White Sut’s bear, far back under the porch and still smarting from its own walloping, began to whimper. It was afraid it would be the next one beaten, though its master, White Sut, was not present, having ridden off the day before without a word.

  Davie did not beat Willy as long as he normally would have, because the hand he liked to wield the post with, his right hand, was sore from having been bitten by the irate badger a few days before.

  “I don’t know why you’re so mad at Willy,” Frank Beck said, once Davie’s temper had subsided a bit. “At least you killed a marshal.

  “It’s not every day you kill a marshal,” Frank repeated, hoping the thought would lift Davie’s spirits. It was not that Frank Beck particularly cared whether Davie was happy; it was just that when Davie was not happy, violent fits were apt to slop over from Willy, the usual target, to anyone who happened to be nearby—and Frank was nearby.

  “Kilt him, and got away with it,” old Roy put in.

  That aspect of the matter had not occurred to Davie Beck.

  “What do you mean, got away with it?” Davie asked.

  “They think Ned Christie done it—at least that’s the opinion in Tahlequah,” old Roy said. Davie was looking at him out of his crazed red eyes, looking at him so fiercely that Roy Tagus wondered if he had been wise to speak at all. For a moment, he thought he might have to repel Davie with his boot knife, a thin blade pointed as a needle that he had concealed in the sole of his right boot. If attacked, he could kick a man in the shin with the boot knife. The pain of a shin stab was so intense that Roy would usually have the leisure to escape or else inflict other, more serious injuries on his opponent.

  The shin stab worked with normal men, but Davie Beck was not a normal man—old Roy thought he might have to poke a scissor’s blade into the man’s jugular, if he charged. In close encounters, he had found scissors to be a more effective weapon than bowie knives. Many men did not even notice scissors; they would think they were winning the fight until they discovered they were bleeding to death. The sight of a bowie knife, on the other hand, might cause some opponents to resort to firearms, and firearms could quickly lead to fatalities.

  Old Roy sought no fatalities—fortunately, Davie Beck liked the thought that he had gotten away with killing a white marshal.

  “What’s that? Are you sure?” Davie asked.

  “Why, yes. The talk in Tahlequah is that Ned Christie probably killed that marshal,” old Roy repeated.

  “That’s good news, Dave,” Little Ray Beck said. He squatted down by Willy, and rolled back one of his eyelids. Willy’s eyeball began to twitch, a sign that he was not dead, but merely insensible.

  “They think Ned did it,” Frank said. “That means you won’t even have to kill him yourself, Davie. You can let the law hunt him down and hang him legal.”

  That line of reasoning might have convinced most men, but Davie Beck was not so easily swayed. He had his mind set on killing Ned Christie himself, and was not sure he wanted the law to do it—though of course, that would be the convenient approach. In his opinion, personal vengeance was one of the most satisfying things in life, and Ned Christie was the only man ever to shame him or defeat him. He was of no mind to let an Arkansas court cheat him of what was his.

  “They can think what they like. I mean to kill Ned Christie myself,” Davie said.

  “Besides,” he remarked a little later, “if I let ’em hang him, I’d lose that dollar White Sut offered me for his head.”

  “No, you wouldn’t, Davie,” Little Ray, the younger brother, protested. “You could still dig him up and take his head off.

  “White Sut didn’t say you had to kill Ned personal,” Little Ray added. “He just said he’d give you a dollar for the head.”

  Davie Beck considered the argument picayune. He meant to kill Ned Christie himself, and was still annoyed with Willy for not spotting Ned when he was asleep under a bush, and easy to take.

  Old Roy Tagus, convinced that there was little chance of selling needles or getting the Becks to allow him to sharpen anything, mounted his black mule and rode away. He meant to travel to Dog Town and try his luck on Belle Blue.

  As old Roy was leaving, Willy Beck roused himself enough to crawl under the porch with the bear.

  20

  WHEN JUDGE PARKER HEARD THE NEWS ABOUT DAN MAPLES, HE immediately closed his chambers, saddled his brown mule, and began the long ride into the Blue Hills to inform Wilma Maples that she was a widow. Mart was hoeing in the garden, as the Judge rode off. He waved at her, but Mart did not welcome distractions, and did not interrupt her work to wave back—once Mart took a notion to garden, there was no stopping her.

  The Judge did not send death news by messenger, if there was a widow or a family involved. He felt he owed it to the families to deliver the news himself. As he rode, he chastised himself for allowing a whore-minded young man such as Buck Massey to accompany Dan Maples on the trip. Two steady marshals could have faced down the Becks, or any assembly short of a mob. But young Buck Massey had been so far from being steady that, if reports were correct, Dan Maples himself had had to kill the man. Now, the Judge reflected sadly, his own error in judgment had cost Dan Maples his life and had left Wilma a widow. Wilma was Mart’s second cousin, too.

  “You ought to send the army to Tahlequah,” Chilly Stufflebean suggested, as the Judge was leaving.

  “I’m a judge, Chilly—I don’t command an army,” the Judge informed him. “I don’t even command two good marshals . . . if I’da had two, I would never have troubled young Massey to leave his whore.”

  Along the shadowy trail into the Blue Hills, the Judge met Cracky Bolen. One of his feet was in the stirrup as it should be, but the other—black, shoeless, and too swollen to fit in a stirrup—swung by the horse’s side.

  “That foot looks bad, Cracky,” the Jud
ge observed, pausing to give the black foot careful attention. “What bit you?”

  “Why, a copperhead,” Cracky said cheerfully. “I come on it in the henhouse, eating an egg. It was a big egg, too. I went to stomp the copperhead. It never occurred to me that it could bite me when it had an egg in its mouth. But the dern critter bit me, right through my shoe.”

  “A snake with an egg in its mouth is still quicker than a human,” the Judge pointed out. He did not like the looks of the swollen foot.

  “I had better not detain you in idle conversation,” the Judge said. “I expect you better lope on into town and find the doc.”

  “My wife thinks it’s too late,” Cracky said. “She wanted to chop off my foot with the hatchet, but I wouldn’t let her.”

  “Why not?” the Judge asked. “I admit it’s drastic, but then it looks to me like you’re drastically snakebit.”

  “I guess I didn’t feel up to having no foot chopped off,” he replied.

  He was sweating profusely, and his blue shirt was as soaked as if he had fallen in a pond. His voice, though, was calm.

  “I expect I’m a goner,” Cracky said. He tried to hold up his foot, but the effort made him grimace. “I ought to have just sat on the porch till the angels came for me. It would have saved a doctor bill.”

  “Are you sure it’ll be the angels, Cracky?” the Judge wondered.

  “Oh, I expect,” Cracky Bolen said, nodding his head. “I ain’t sinned a whole lot.”

  He reflected on the matter a moment, studying his swollen foot as if the black appendage belonged to someone else.

  “How would a person sin, Judge, up where I live?” Cracky asked. “I cuss a little now and then, but that’s about the only form of sin available to me.”

  “Well, you’re probably right . . . I expect it will be the angels. But they might delay their visit if you get on in to the doc,” the Judge allowed.

  “I’ve rarely seen you on this trail, Judge,” Cracky remarked. “What brings you to the Blue Hills?”

  “A sad errand,” the Judge admitted. “Dan Maples was killed in Tahlequah.”

  “Now, you don’t say,” Cracky said. “Who killed him?”

  “An assailant or assailants unknown,” the Judge told him. “I have come to inform the widow.”

  “Wilma? Didn’t you hear?” Cracky asked.

  “Hear what?” the Judge said.

  “Wilma lost her mind,” Cracky said. “She lost it the day Dan left, right after that crow came and lit on his shoulder. I wouldn’t go in that house, if I were you, Judge. Wilma might come at you.”

  “She’s my wife’s second cousin,” the Judge revealed. “She won’t come at me.”

  “She’s got herself mixed up with that dern crow, Judge,” Cracky said. “She sits on the roof, cawing the whole livelong day. I seen it myself.”

  “I expect she knows Dan’s dead,” the Judge said. “Women know things. Mart would know it if I died, even if I was in China at the time.”

  “Yep . . . I expect she knows,” Cracky agreed.

  “Good luck with your foot, Cracky,” the Judge said. “You need to hurry, or them angels will be visiting you.”

  Cracky rode on. He was sorry Wilma Maples had lost her mind. She had been a fine neighbour to him, in happier days. The last time he had gone to check on her, she had ripped most of her clothes off. The fine womanly figure he had admired in secret for so long was mostly exposed, and yet the sight had only made him feel the sadder for her. She had rolled off the roof at some point, and was black with bruises. Her hair was tangled, and she kept up a wild cawing.

  The sight of her had unnerved him badly. He had wanted to help her, but when he began to dismount, she ran into the woods and hid. There was not much he could do anyway, though he did chop a week’s worth of firewood for her, just to be neighbourly.

  As Judge Parker rode on into the Blue Hills, the shadows began to fall across the narrow trail, from the trees that lined the steep slopes. The Judge was a man who liked sunlight. It was a pleasure to him, when he walked home to lunch at midday, to see the hot sun shining on the surface of the Arkansas River. The water was green in the sunlight. A fish would leap now and then, and water birds skimmed the surface, hoping to grab a minnow or a water bug. Cloudy days cast a pall on his spirit, and so did shadows.

  But the fact was, much of life’s work had to be done in the shadows of death and doubt, like the work he was now about. Cracky Bolen would likely die of his snakebite; Wilma Maples had lost her mind; Dan Maples, her husband, was dead, as was Judge B. H. Sixkiller, a respected jurist.

  The shadows that fell across the road into the hills were only mimicking the shadows of life. He knew he ought to pay no attention to them, but a gloom was on his spirit from the thought of what a hard business life was. He wished he could be more like Mart—if Mart had a garden to hoe, she was happy. As a general rule, she kept too busy to notice the shadows of life; or, if she did notice, she was too busy to comment.

  When the Judge approached the Mapleses’ farmhouse, a half-naked woman with tangled hair, her body black with bruises, rushed out the door. The Judge was shocked by her appearance. He would hardly have recognized her as Wilma, his wife’s second cousin.

  “He’s kilt, ain’t he?! He’s kilt!” Wilma shrieked. Then she began cawing wildly, as Cracky had said she would. She spread her arms like a bird, and ran around in front of the house, cawing.

  “My Lord,” Judge Parker murmured to himself. He found what he was seeing hard to credit. The last time he had run into Wilma in town, she had been a cheerful, appealing woman. He had always felt better after a chat with Wilma, and he was not the only one to feel that way. Yet, here she was, so demented as to be almost unrecognizable, cawing like a crow in front of her own house, a house she had kept neat and clean for many years. Other women lost their husbands without losing their minds; he was at a loss to know why Wilma was so afflicted.

  Perhaps it was the crow that lit on Dan’s shoulder as he was leaving. The story was all over Fort Smith. The general line was that Dan had been a fool to attempt a dangerous assignment after such a warning. But why would such a thing make Wilma go crazy before she even knew her husband was dead?

  It was a mystery the Judge did not expect to find an answer to, but here he was—he had to do something. If he rode off and left her second cousin in such a state, Mart would not be pleased.

  “Wilma, it’s the truth—Dan’s dead,” he said. “I expect you best get some of your things and come on to town with me. I’m afraid you might come to harm if you stay here grieving like this.”

  To his surprise, Wilma stopped cawing when he spoke, and looked at him submissively. When he took her arm, she did not resist. She let him lead her into the house, which was a chaos. Wilma had broken most of the glasses and smashed the plates. The Judge did not like being inside the house, not in the state it was in. It spoke of the disorder that could befall the human spirit, a disorder he dealt with every day in his work. When possible, the Judge preferred to banish it from his family life.

  But he was made a little hopeful by the fact that Wilma had quieted down. Perhaps somewhere in her, part of the old, cheerful Wilma survived. Perhaps with good treatment, her mind could be reclaimed.

  He looked at her again, standing a few feet away, docile.

  “Would you like to get some of your things, Wilma?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what to get,” Wilma confessed, simply. “I been up in the sky, looking for Dan. He’s mad at me because he thinks I’m selling eggs . . . but I ain’t sold no eggs. I need to find him and let him know, so he’ll come back home.”

  Wilma made the speech as sensibly as if she were ordering flour at the general store. It was what she felt: Dan was in the sky somewhere, angry about the eggs.

  When Wilma had realized that Dan, her husband, was gone, such a loneliness came on her that she could not bear it. She began to take off her clothes and climb the roof, trying to be a bird, so she co
uld find Dan and bring him back. She could not bear the loneliness, and it caused something to break inside her. Seeing the Judge now seemed to be helpful; she was glad the Judge was there.

  The Judge thought he had better not try to do too much. Keeping Wilma docile was the main thing. If he could just keep her level awhile, maybe the sensible, competent Wilma would come back. There were things that crazed women, or broke them, in the frontier life; there were things that crazed men, too. But maybe Wilma Maples had not really crossed the border into madness. Maybe she could be coaxed back.

  The Judge rummaged until he found an old cloth coat, which he managed to put around Wilma’s shoulders, buttoning it in front to shield her bosom.

  “I expect we best wrap up and go on to town,” he said. He was careful to move slowly, and he avoided looking Wilma in the eyes. In her eyes, the wildness still lurked, and he had learned through long experience that it was never wise to look wild things in the eye—not mad dogs, and not grief-crazed women, either.

  By talking in a soothing tone and proceeding slowly, he managed to ease Wilma outside and up on the mule. She was craning her neck and searching the skies, as if she were expecting the crow to appear again.

  “He’s kilt, he’s kilt!” she said again, with her head craned up to the sky. But she did not caw, as she had when he rode up. The Judge thought that was a sign of improvement.

  “I think Dan’s in the sky,” Wilma said, in a more normal voice, when they were a mile or so down the road.

  “No, he ain’t, Wilma,” the Judge said. “Dan’s in a grave over in Indian Territory. He was killed by an assailant in Tahlequah, while carrying out his duty.

  “Dan was a man who never shirked a duty,” he added gently. He saw no point in encouraging any more talk about the sky, since he believed Wilma might take it into her head to caw again.

  For the rest of the ride to Fort Smith, Wilma Maples did not look at the sky. The trail was in deep shadow by then. Several times the Judge came upon deer, grazing by the path. For a time, he attempted to hum a hymn. He had a good baritone, and often sang in church, if not too far behind on his judicial paperwork. He hummed “Rock of Ages,” and then a few other hymns he liked. He wanted to keep Wilma soothed until he could get her to Mart. Maybe Mart would know how to turn her grieving back onto a normal path.