Far as the Eye Can See

by Robert Bausch

  “I believe you heard me,” I said out loud.

  She leaned back and hit me hard on my jaw with her fist. I almost fell over backwards. I stood there looking at her. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. She leaned back to give me another one, and I stepped aside and covered up so she only caught me on my forearm. “Christ Almighty,” I said. I was glad she wasn’t Eveline’s brother. She could hit hard.

  She moved closer in, like she was going to give me something under my arms and in the belly. I lowered my arms to protect myself, and she caught me again on the jaw with her right hand.

  “Are you going to quit this?” I said. Now I had both fists up and was dancing around like a boxer. I made up my mind if she hit me again, I’d pretend she was Eveline’s brother and give her nose a try. “You better quit,” I said. “I ain’t about to take no more.”

  Then she started crying. “You . . . you . . .” She couldn’t get out what she wanted to say.

  “I’ll get her the perfume,” I said. “Jesus.”

  She turned around so fast her long dress belled out a bit and I seen her black stockings. She stomped off and got back up in the wagon. I tried to get out of there, but while I was pulling the travois up in the shade next to old General Cooney, Eveline come down out of the wagon.

  “I suppose you heard it,” I said.

  “Heard what?”

  “You know what.”

  “I wondered what you two were whispering about. I was asleep for most of it.”

  “You was.”

  “I do not want any perfume,” she said. She looked pretty good in that light. The sun was weak, as usual, but it made her skin look kind of golden, and with no smile on her face, she looked right pretty. She’d pulled her dark hair over her forehead, and her eyes kind of glistened in a lively way. “I do not want anything from you at all,” she said.

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Except that one other thing you mentioned.” Now she did smile a bit, and again the gaps in her teeth was kind of distracting. Still, something stirred in me, looking into her eyes. She was a woman that known life for all its splendor and taken what she wanted out of it, and I admired her for it.

  “What other thing did I mention?”

  “General Cooney’s part of the wagon.”

  “If I’m here at Christmas morning, why don’t we hang a few of stockings and see what any of us finds there.”

  “Will you come back to this wagon tonight?”

  “I’ll be here until I leave,” I said. “If you’ll take me.”

  Now I had to find a damn bottle of perfume. I known the store’d have nothing for women, so I rode over to Fort Ellis and tried to get in to see General Gibbon. I figured if he had his wife with him she might be able to help out. I wasn’t going to find no perfume among the Indians or the troops, although a sizable portion of them fellows could sure use it. General Gibbon had gone back to his home in St. Louis for Christmas, so I went to the quartermaster’s store and found some toilet water but it wasn’t no real perfume. When I asked the fellow in there if he had something more sweet smelling, he laughed at me, and I got to laughing too. “I know it sounds pretty silly,” I said. “But I live with two women.”

  “Oh, so you’re the fellow living up the street a way in that Conestoga with them two ladies.”

  I nodded, holding the toilet water in my hand.

  “I heard about you.”

  “You did.”

  “Living with two women. Chief of scouts, am I right? Why, you’re famous.”

  “I guess.”

  The fellow was bald except for a beard that started in front of his ears and wrapped around his lower chin. “A lot of the soldiers talk about you and them women in that wagon.”

  “It’s a blessing,” I said. “They got a little stove in there that vents out the side and it stays mighty warm on these cold nights.”

  “Well, I guess it does. You don’t need the stove, am I right?” He nudged me with his elbow and laughed again.

  I laughed, too, a bit, but then I said, “It ain’t nothing like that.”

  “Nooo, I guess it’s not.” Now he laughed really hard, like he was in on something together with me and we both was sharing in it.

  “It ain’t what you think,” I said. Even if he had the right idea, I didn’t want him to have it. It wasn’t none of his business, and I didn’t like it that he was talking about me and my friends in that way. I didn’t care if he guessed my position exactly. I wanted him to shut up about it. So I tried to distract him with a question I really wanted to know the answer to. “What’s that you heard about me and the chief of scouts?”

  “You’re leading the scout troop. Colonel Brisbin said so. You’ll be his eyes and ears out there in the field.”

  I threw a half a dollar on the counter for the toilet water. “Any way I can sweeten this water a bit?”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” he said, now in a soft voice. “My advice, sir? She’s a woman and she’ll know what that is no matter how you sweeten it.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Don’t you want another one?” He stared at me, his face about to break into a smile, but he froze it like that, waiting for me to say something.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  And then I seen this hanger with three white linen gowns hanging off it—the kind of undergarment a man ain’t supposed to see. “Where’d you get them?”

  “St. Louis. They was on their way to California, but no one ever come to get them.”

  “I’ll take two of them.”

  “Well, you do have plans, don’t you?”

  “It ain’t nothing like that,” I said. “How much?”

  “Four dollars each.”

  I looked at him hard.

  “They are expensive.”

  “I’ll take two for six dollars.”

  “You’ll take one for six and I’ll give you two dollars change. They’re four dollars each.”

  “I’ll give you a fine buffalo robe and six dollars.”

  “I got to see the robe first.”

  “Ah, the hell with it,” I said.

  It would be the first Christmas I’d spend under a roof in almost six years. I didn’t want to look forward to it, but I did. The side of my face where Christine had clipped me was swelled up and it throbbed to beat all. And I was scared to death of what would happen that night in the wagon, so I figured it would be a good thing to come with more than one gift of a little toilet water.

  Chapter 14

  Well, they had a little celebration with red candles and a little pine tree set up in the back of the wagon. They wrapped it in red ribbons with a few gold ribbons mixed in. They served boiled wine and fried up a piece of buffalo meat on top of the stove. They made gravy from the drippings and had fresh biscuits to dip in it. I ate like a king.

  Then Eveline suggested we pray. I listened to them going on and on about the birth of Jesus and sacrifice and all. I was full of good food and a little sleepy, but I behaved myself. I ain’t never placed much faith in all that hocus-pocus about a God and angels and all. I don’t know how anybody that’s been to a war can conceive of such a thing as a merciful Lord. It ain’t nothing but the last thing a damn fool would invent if he seen the carnage of a battlefield. If there was no God, nor a idea of a God, and a fellow wanted to imagine something bigger than hisself, and he seen a battlefield, he would not ever come up with the idea of this old fellow in the sky with a white beard who gives a damn about what goes on down here. But some folks believe it. The Indians got their own version of it. Ain’t nobody exempt from the temptation to believe it, I guess. But I don’t. I ain’t never and that’s just the way it is. Sometimes I wish I did believe it.

  I would not challenge them two women, though. I went right along and pretended to believe everything.

  It was powerful warm and so comfortable, I started thinking about what was in my near future: marching around in the Yellowstone River valley and on out to ea
stern Montana and the empty plains. There ain’t no shelter from the wind out there. The whole idea made me sick to my stomach and like to ruined the night. There ain’t no use in thinking about the future too much because of what it does to what’s going on here and now. If you think too much about a dark future, you ruin what’s going on today. You got to take the future out of the equation’s what I always say.

  “Ladies,” I said. “I’m feeling a mite sentimental right about now, and would like to give out the presents.”

  First come the toilet water. I’d wrapped both little bottles in brown paper and tied them at the top with yellow ribbon. The gowns I put in a single box—it’s all the quartermaster had—and again wrapped it in brown paper. I wrote on the top, “For the Both of You.”

  They was pretty happy with the toilet water, but when Eveline opened the box with the gowns in it, they both started weeping and carrying on. They each give me a kiss on the cheek. “I wonder if this will fit me,” Eveline said, holding hers up.

  “Of course it will,” Christine said. “They are just exactly the right size.”

  They was long gowns, and would cover them from neck to feet, but maybe Eveline’s would be a bit tight. She was more ample in the middle than Christine, and the gown looked like it hung down without any kind of blossoming in the midsection. But it didn’t dampen the mood none that she wondered about how it might fit. She was so happy when she kissed me, there was tears in her eyes.

  “We have something for you,” Christine said. She handed me a box that was pretty heavy. I hoped it was cartridges for my Evans repeater, or maybe a new pistol. The weight fooled me. When I got it open, I found another leather-bound volume that looked like a Bible—this one said The Complete Works of Shakespeare.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” I said.

  “I know you loved to hear me read from this,” Christine said. “So we wanted you to have it so you can read it any time you want, no matter where you might be in your travels.”

  “Thank you kindly.” I didn’t know what to do with it. It was the heaviest book I ever lifted. “I will read this wherever I go.”

  “And when you do, you will hear Christine’s voice.”

  “I expect I will.”

  “Read it in remembrance.”

  “In what?”

  “In remembrance of us and our time together.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “Of course.” I opened it and looked at the pages. There was a lot of space on most of them, but the print was so small I could barely make it out, and it was bunched up in such a way I didn’t see how a body could read it. I was happy to see that it did have some pictures, but mostly they was far apart and there wasn’t enough of them.

  Later that night, the wind kicked up and froze the air again. It come from the north and blew on the side of the wagon where the vent for the stove was, so it kept banking down the fire and causing smoke to leak back into where we was sitting. We sipped coffee and tried to keep warm by the stove for a while, but I known we’d have to turn the wagon around out of the wind if we was going to be warm on this night. I didn’t want to go out there yet and get started on it. I figured I’d have to drag Cooney out from under first, then hitch at least one horse to get the whole thing turned. Eveline got all bundled up with buffalo robes so she could help me.

  “Well?” she said.

  I got up and climbed down in the cold wind. Eveline said there was no need to hitch up a damn horse. “Just you and I can pull the tongue and it will move.”

  “We gotta get Cooney out of there.”

  “Leave him where he is. We only have to pull it a little bit, turn it some out of the wind.”

  I shrugged. If she wanted to lead the way, I figured I’d go along. If she was right, we wouldn’t have much to do, and if she was wrong, then we had the horse. I walked around in front, kicking snow out of my way as best I could. Eveline come behind me. I picked up the one side of the trace and she picked up the other. We straddled each side, and when I give the signal, we started pulling as hard as we could. The wheels of the wagon didn’t budge.

  “We gotta get Christine out of there. Maybe a few other things to lighten it.”

  Eveline laughed. “You think Christine weighs that much?”

  I could barely hear her in the wind. Christine, inside the wagon, heard her plain as day. She come to the opening in front. “What did he say?”

  “I didn’t say nothing.”

  “He wants you to come down out of there so we can pull this thing.”

  “Oh, get the horse,” she said.

  “I didn’t say you was that heavy,” I said.

  “Get the horse.”

  “That’s what I thought I’d have to do,” I said.

  I trudged to the stable and got my packhorse. He didn’t want to go. I had to drag him out and put him in front of the wagon and hitch him up, The whole time he’s doing everything to discourage me. I finally got him in the trace and hitched to the wagon, but then he wouldn’t move. I started cursing to beat all, and Eveline didn’t like it.

  “On the Lord’s birthday and you say things like that.”

  “I ain’t addressing the Lord.” I pulled harder on the reins, standing in front of the horse, and he kept bobbing his head and moving back away from me.

  “Please don’t curse like that.”

  “Just leave me alone right now,” I said.

  Finally the horse begun to move with me. He pulled and his hooves slipped a little in the snow, but he got it moving and I turned it around so that the wind was blowing at the back corner and I seen smoke beginning to billow out of the pipe that vented from the stove. “That ought to do it,” I said. “You might ought to put a elbow on that pipe so it sticks straight up at the end. Then it don’t matter which way the wind blows.”

  Eveline come up to me, put her hands on my face, and leaned in real close. “Tonight I will come to you again,” she whispered. She waited there, looking into my eyes. In the cold moonlight, with steam coming out of her nose and mouth, her eyes gleaming, she didn’t look like just a woman. She looked like a kind of spirit—beautiful and free. But I known she was a woman, a capable, strong woman. She made herself frail in a sad kind of way. I looked in her eyes and it was like the first time I really seen her. I was looking in the face of something that hit me like music, like a fine song, and I known for sure I was never going to forget it. Them eyes softened something in me I didn’t like to think about. She was warm and alive and I come to see I had formed a attachment and that surprised the hell out of me.

  I didn’t know what to say. I put my arms around her and smiled.

  “Do you want me?” she said.

  “I guess I do.”

  She looked away, and I put my hands on hers, which was still up against either side of my face. “Eveline,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I’m right taken by surprise here.”

  I think I was still smiling. I hope I was still smiling. Her face changed when she looked at me again. “I wish . . .” I started to say, and she put her head on my chest and said, “No. Please do not say it.”

  “This is something I ain’t ready for.”

  “I know it.”

  “But listen,” I said. “I don’t mean that like you think I mean it. I just mean I’m taken by surprise here.”

  She didn’t say nothing. I heard a little sound from her voice, but it was not clear to me if she was trying not to cry or laugh.

  “I ain’t never felt like I’m feeling right now,” I said.

  “Please.”

  “Please what?”

  “Do not wish for anything.” She let go my face and turned and climbed back up in the wagon, and I think a part of my soul went on up there with her. I unhitched the horse and walked him back to the stable, thinking about what I might be getting myself into. I guess it pleased me to think Eveline would be riding me again once I remembered it. When I thought about it, I felt kind of sorry for thinking of her in that way.
On the walk back to the stable, and while I was putting the packhorse back in his stall, the only thing I could see in my mind was her eyes in that frozen moonlight and the sound of her name. Eveline. It rhymed with “fine” and “wine.”

  When I got back to the wagon and climbed up inside, they had fed the stove some and the heat hit me like sunlight at first. I took off my coat and settled back a ways from the heat, then eventually I bunched up the blankets and laid down again like I’d been doing. Eveline settled herself right at my feet but she didn’t touch me none. We both just set there looking at each other, wishing Christine would leave off that Dickens fellow. She just kept on a-reading and feeding the stove and outside the wind wouldn’t quit.

  Both me and Eveline fell asleep finally, with Christine reading on into David Copperfield’s adulthood.

  I waked up the next morning in a pretty foul mood. Bright sunlight broke through the back flap of the wagon, but the wind had not settled yet. It was still cold air flying in and the fire in the stove had banked. I thought I’d go on over to the bathhouse and get cleaned up, but Eveline come over to me, real quiet, like, and started trying to get me to take off my breeches.

  “Not now,” I said.

  “She is asleep still. We have time,” she whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Shhhh. This is your Christmas present from me.”

  Now my back ached something fierce, and it was Christmas morning, for Lord’s sake. She was pawing at me, and I grabbed her hands. “Listen,” I said. “It’s too late for this now.”

  “You will be gone soon. You will be out on that prairie, in this weather. You want to have something fine to remember me.”

  “I already got that,” I said.

  “I never met a man like you. General Cooney was an animal compared to you, and he was older and a lot sicker.”

  “You was with General Cooney?”

  “I had to say no to him a hundred times, as sick as he was.”

  “I ain’t sick at all.”

  “Well, what’s wrong, then?”

  Christine snorted in her sleep, but she didn’t move none. I nodded in her direction and said, “She punched me good yesterday. She don’t like us doing this.”