Cold as it was, Kit was soaked with sweat from his vigorous work with the axe.
“If you don’t slow up on the firewood there won’t be a tree left standing,” Jim said. “You got enough chopped to heat a fort, and you don’t live in a fort.”
Kit stuck his axe in a log and left it. He stared at the towering stacks of firewood as if noticing them for the first time.
“I hate running out of firewood,” he said.
Then he sighed.
“There’s nothing wrong with having plenty of firewood, is there?” he asked. To Jim he seemed distracted, even rather gloomy.
“I don’t know what else to do when Josie’s mad at me,” Kit admitted. “It’s too cold to just sit around. So I chop firewood.”
This was the first hint Jim had had that the newly married Carsons were experiencing marital unease—though, once he thought about it, it was not surprising that Josie got mad at Kit. Jim himself was frequently mad at Kit—at least he was if he had to be in his company for a day or so. Josefina had been mightily taken with Kit before the marriage, but now that she actually had to live with him it was no wonder that she found him irritating.
Jim was about to ask what Josie was mad about when the girl herself popped out the door. She looked as friendly and cheerful as could be.
“Come in, Jimmy—we got posole,” she said.
Then she looked at her husband.
“What about you, woodchopper?” she asked. “Don’t you ever get tired of chopping wood?”
Kit was perplexed. Twenty minutes earlier Josie had been seething like a kettle, so angry with him that she spluttered when she tried to talk. But now she was his old, cheerful Josie again, a twinkle in her eye as she stood beneath the high piles of stacked firewood towering above her head.
“If this wood falls on the house it will be the end of us,” she said.
In fact she had been furious with Kit, earlier— she had given him a long list of supplies to bring back from the trading post, but he had let the list blow away and had forgotten half the things on it, including the most important item of all, a swatch of soft flannel which she had ordered specially from Saint Louis and had been waiting for for a year. She wanted to make the flannel into a warm nightgown to wear on cold nights, when the north wind howled through Taos. Kit had promised her faithfully that he would bring the flannel, but then he had carelessly lost her list and had returned with some scratchy wool cloth instead. When she blew up at him he just looked puzzled. For a man as finicky as Kit was about his moccasins and his buckskins, it was absurd to think that he couldn’t tell the difference between wool and flannel. Every time she entrusted him with an order from the trading post he forgot half her requests and muddled the rest. Kit was famous among the mountain men for his exceptional eyesight, and yet, in a store, he couldn’t tell the difference between two cloths.
Of course it was vexing to have a husband who constantly forgot what he was sent to fetch; Josie had given him a fiery dressing-down, but then she cooled off. It was over. She would get someone with an errand that required going to the trading post to bring her her flannel. Now it was time to forget it—time for supper and bed.
Kit was so relieved when he realized his wife was no longer angry with him that he became giddy for a moment. Josie’s tempers, when they flared, were so violent that Kit always concluded that he had ruined his marriage beyond repair. Her angers seemed to signal the end of everything. Then, when they abated and domestic life went on, Kit felt so happy that he usually hit the bottle, if there was a bottle to hit, as there happened to be on this occasion, even though he knew the abstemious Jim Snow didn’t much approve of drinking. He poured himself a cup of whiskey, Josie watching him merrily all the while. Josie had a tendency to become amorous after one of her fits— she would certainly be amorous if she sat there and got drunk.
“He forgot all the things I told him to bring— that’s why I chased him out,” Josie said. She saw no need to be reticent with Jim Snow, who had traveled with Kit and must often have suffered from his forgetfulness.
“I hope all that firewood don’t fall on the house,” she said, a second time.
“It won’t fall on the house—don’t you think I even know how to stack firewood?” Kit asked, flaring a little himself. Jim and Josie looked at him as if he were a rank incompetent.
Jim polished off two large bowls of posole and sat staring into the fire. The fact that Kit had made peace with Josie reminded him uneasily that he hadn’t made peace with Tasmin, and would have no opportunity to do so for many months—not unless he refused to lead the wagon train that the Bents were even then loading. He could refuse; but he didn’t think Tasmin would welcome him back to Santa Fe, just then. Tasmin, like Josie, sometimes seethed and settled down; but Jim felt her present mood was different. Probably Cook’s explanation was the right one. Tasmin was grieving for Pomp—no doubt it would wear off someday, but not necessarily soon. He might as well go on to Saint Louis while she was struggling with it—or so it seemed.
“I’ll have some whiskey, if you care to share it,” Jim said, startling Kit so greatly that he almost dropped the jug.
“Have it all, I’m drunk enough—Josie will get me down and beat me if I get any drunker,” Kit declared.
Josie smiled. She meant to get her forgetful husband down all right, but beating him wasn’t what she had in mind.
The whiskey jug Kit handed Jim was more than half full—yet in the space of an hour, to Kit’s shock and Josie’s surprise, Jim Snow drank it all. He became a little flushed, but otherwise merely sat, staring into the fire. Kit started to remind Jim that whiskey cost money, but thought better of it. It didn’t cost enough to risk making Jim Snow mad.
For Jim to drink like that suggested to Kit that there was trouble somewhere—probably at home. Tasmin had never been an easy wife. Kit, curious, decided that the best policy was to ask no questions.
When the whiskey jug was empty Jim thanked both the Carsons for their hospitality and stood up to leave. Kit was startled: it was after midnight, cold and blowy, whereas their house was snug, warmed by some of the sweet-burning firewood he had stacked up. “You’re welcome to sleep here,” he said. “It’s freezing out and you’re drunk. Surely you ain’t fool enough to ride off this hill tonight.”
“I’m not drunk, but I reckon I could ride down a hill even if I was drunk,” Jim said. “Your wife’s a sight drunker than me.”
With a nod, he disappeared into the darkness and the wind.
Josie was glad Jim left. She liked having Kit to herself, in their little house. There’d be nobody but her husband to hear her, if she got loud.
“He drank half a jug of whiskey—that ain’t like Jim,” Kit said. “I bet he and Tasmin had a fight.”
“Don’t think about him, think about me,” Josie demanded, wobbling a little from the whiskey she had imbibed. She began to pull Kit into the bedroom; they had a good corn shucks mattress on their low bed. Kit was still staring at the door, worried about his friend. Josie began to feel impatient.
“Come on, get your prick out—make it hard!” Josie instructed. “Get in bed and make it hard.”
His wife’s directness sometimes shocked Kit— she spoke coarsely when she was excited, and she was usually excited when they drank whiskey.
“I guess I’ve been married long enough to know what to do,” Kit said, a little annoyed. A few hours earlier she had been screaming at him for forgetting her flannel—now she had her hand down in his pants, in a hurry for his prick to stiffen up.
With Josie rushing him, Kit did as instructed, but for a moment, he couldn’t get Jim Snow out of his mind. Jim had looked lonely—Kit could not remember seeing that look on his friend’s face before. If he was lonely, why hadn’t he at least stayed the night? Why go riding off in the dark when there was plenty of firewood—he wouldn’t have had to be cold.
4
In the sad months before the twins were born . . .
IN THE SA
D MONTHS before the twins were born, and afterward too, for many dark weeks, Father Geoffrin had been the only companion Tasmin would consistently admit. Kit Carson had come once, but Tasmin’s condition had troubled him so that he hadn’t come again—it was Kit’s view that Tasmin no longer wanted to live; and if she didn’t want to, very likely she wouldn’t. Here was a trouble Kit couldn’t bear to face.
Father Geoffrin faced it. He came into Tasmin’s room day after day, and sat with her, as silent as she was. Tasmin stared at the hills, Father Geoffrin merely sat. Sometimes Tasmin allowed him to hold her hand—other times she pushed his hand away. Once he tried to read her a bit of Racine, thinking the beautiful French lines might reach her, but Tasmin shook her head and he put the book away. Tasmin’s room was at the top of the house. The sounds of the Plaza—donkeys braying, people quarreling, the blacksmith pounding—hardly reached her. Monty was talking now, but Tasmin only occasionally responded to his babble. She scarcely ate. Vicky Berrybender told her husband that she feared Tasmin would die.
“No, no—she mustn’t—can’t spare Tassie,” Lord Berrybender said. “Need her to help me run my plantation, once we get to Texas. Excellent soil for cotton in Texas, I’m told. Cotton’s sure to be the coming crop.”
Fear lay over the household—fear of losing Tasmin, their most able crisis manager. Even Lord Berrybender fell into a funk, hunted less and less, rarely put his hand on his wife. Gloom seeped like fog through the company. Even though Tasmin was far above them, everyone spoke in whispers or subdued tones. The fact that Jim had come and gone, effecting no change, was not encouraging. They all trusted in Jim’s ability. But Tasmin’s heavy sadness, her evident resignation, defeated them. Jim left, promising to come back.
Only Father Geoffrin took the optimistic view.
“She’s not dying,” he insisted. “She’s just sad.”
“But she only eats chicken soup,” Cook insisted. “Just chicken soup.”
“That’s quite enough,” Father Geoff assured her. “Keep making soup. This will pass.”
When he said the same words to Tasmin she looked at him scornfully.
“How would you know what will pass and what won’t?” she asked. “Watch what you’re saying, or I’ll put you out.”
“Don’t put me out,” Geoff said, smiling. “The priests here are filthy and mean. The natives hate them. They’d like nothing better than to burn a few at the stake.”
“No doubt you deserve it, you heretic,” Tasmin said, beginning to cry, a change Geoff thought for the good. It was her blank days that worried him most. Hours passed, even days, without Tasmin saying a word. Little Onion was profoundly disturbed. Many times she crept to the door of Tasmin’s room and peeped through the keyhole, only to see her mistress still in bed, staring, silent.
When Tasmin did cry it was no short tear burst. She went from being dry to being in flood. Father Geoffrin waited. He put his arm around her; she shrugged it off; he tried again; she let it stay. Finally she leaned her head against his shoulder.
“I can tolerate you because you’re like me—you have no one,” she said.
“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard you say,” Geoff told her. “You have a father, sisters, a child, a husband, and devoted servants and friends.”
“I meant I had no lover—you know perfectly well what I meant,” she chided. “Every time I leave this room I’m faced with the fact that my younger sisters have better judgment than I do, when it comes to men. Buffum is very happy with High Shoulders, and Mary, if anything, is even happier with Piet. I can hardly bear to see them, they’re so happy. I know that’s shameful, but it’s how I am. Why did I have to fall in love with a man who let himself be killed?”
Father Geoffrin sighed. Her mind would not be denied its torment, and it seemed easily to beat the body down. Tasmin, once full-bodied, was now thin and half starved because of the punishment her mind gave out.
“You may recall that I saw you in your first flush of happiness, when you married Jimmy,” he told her. “You were creatures of astonishing beauty. Jimmy seemed to be everything you wanted—yet you fell in love with Pomp, the one person you could never really have—but that’s merely the way of the world.
“I’m capable of doing exactly the same thing,” he admitted. “But folly doesn’t last forever. You’re a healthy woman—you’re young. And you still have Jimmy.”
“Don’t mention him. I don’t want him at all— even his beard irritated me,” Tasmin protested.
“Did you confess anything—to Jimmy I mean?” he asked.
“I don’t know why I didn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “It was on the tip of my tongue. Jim should have figured it out. He should have beaten me . . . if he had . . .”
She stopped, shrugged, shook her head, cried, now helplessly confused. Jim Snow had slapped her for trivial slips of language. If he’d known she had been an adulteress—for all her shameless chasing she had only managed to catch Pomp twice. She was far less of a sinner than she had hoped to be.
Could she explain that to Jim? Why should she explain it to Jim? After all, he had been the one who had entrusted her to Pomp. He was half to blame—but would he understand that, if she confessed?
“Pomp’s dead, Jim’s not—don’t you dare confess,” Father Geoff advised.
“I know I make an exceedingly difficult friend,” Tasmin admitted. “I’ve been even ruder to you than I was to George Catlin, and I was damned rude to George. Why do you bother with me, Mr. Priest?”
“Curiosity,” Father Geoff said, at once. Tasmin’s eyes, for a moment, had shone with their old sparkle. It confirmed his optimism. Tasmin would recover—it would just take time.
“Curiosity about what?” she asked. “About how you’ll look in ten years,” he said. “Despite all that’s happened you’re a young woman yet. I hope I’m alive to know you when you’re about forty. That’s when the real mischief begins.”
Tasmin, at the time only a week from delivery, suddenly pulled up her gown and exposed her great belly.
“If I keep letting Jim pour babies into me I won’t look like much at forty,” Tasmin said. “I’ll look like an old sow with many litters.”
“It’s rather extraordinary, how very large women do get,” he said, looking at Tasmin’s belly, a sight more gross than he had expected to be shown.
Later, when the priest was gone, Tasmin remembered that she had first thought Pomp, not Jim, had got her with child. Probably that had merely been a romantic conviction.
When her labor began Tasmin insisted on having Father Geoffrin in the room. Cook was shocked, but Tasmin prevailed: Father Geoffrin sat at her head, holding her hand. Cook learned it meant that Tasmin expected to die in labor. Petal came out first and was being lavishly admired when, to everyone’s surprise, Petey followed. Jim was out walking around the Plaza. When he came in he was told he was the father of twins. From the moment that Petal uttered her first indignant cry it was evident that a new and formidable force had appeared among the Berrybenders.
5
And yet, in this unsettled place . . .
IT WILL BE at least a year before Papa’s new guns come—and his new wooden leg,” Buffum pointed out, in troubled tones.
“Yes—or longer. Why?” Mary asked.
Buffum was loath to put her fear into words: the fear that High Shoulders, already restive, would leave and insist that she and Elf go with him.
“His dislike of the Mexicans is extreme,” Buffum reminded them. “The fact that they chained him is an insult he cannot forget.”
They were having the discussion in the nursery. The four newborn infants were all in cradle boards, all asleep except Petal, who surveyed the company with unblinking and not wholly friendly blue eyes. Monty and Talley were galloping around on stick horses that the kindly Signor Claricia had made them. The clatter was considerable. Tasmin wandered in for a moment. She pointed in a menacing fashion at the two stick-horse caballeros, whose fear of her was co
nsiderable. Both dismounted at once.
“He killed two Mexican soldiers as he was escaping,” Tasmin reminded her sister. “You’d think he’d be satisfied with that.”
“He isn’t,” Buffum declared. “I fear that he might snap. They are very rude to Indians, you must admit. It all makes me very uneasy.
“He doesn’t really like this country, anyway,” she went on. “Thinks it’s too dusty.” She stammered a little, from apprehension.
“I guess her handsome Ute wants to go home,” Vicky said. “Men do want to go home, eventually. I live in hope of a day when Albany wants to.”
“Well, he only wants to go to Texas—too bad for you, Vic,” Tasmin said. “I fear you’re destined to be the mistress of a cotton plantation. It’s Papa’s new ambition.”
She judged Buffum’s problem to be the more serious. High Shoulders was deeply devoted to Buffum and Elf—he would expect them to go where he went—and it was dangerous for him in Santa Fe. Nor would Buffum consider being apart from him. She seemed in good health, but how long would she stand up to the rigors of aboriginal life? When circumstances permitted, Buffum still demanded a poached egg in the morning, and Cook, when provided with an adequate kitchen, still poached her eggs to perfection. But there would be no Cook in the Valley of the Chickens—and no eggs, either. Besides that, there was little Elphinstone. What if Buffum’s milk gave out? What would little Elf eat?
“I will not be parted from my husband,” Buffum vowed. “If he goes, I go.”
“It will not be easy,” Mary told her. “No, but it’s better than waiting for High Shoulders to be shot down by some Mexican, as Pomp was,” Buffum said. “I believe I would be less fearful in the wilderness than I am here.
“I’m sorry, Tassie,” she added. “I should not have mentioned Pomp. I know how you grieve.”
Tasmin shrugged. “You merely said what’s true,” she replied. “It’s not a crime to mention Pomp. In fact it’s better that he’s mentioned.”
The Berrybender Narratives Page 90