The Berrybender Narratives

by Larry McMurtry

  “I suppose you’re right, Tassie—it’s mother’s grief she’s feeling.”

  “There’s more besides,” Tasmin said, looking at Little Onion, who sat with the four children but did not seem to be really attending them. Now she looked after them neutrally. Even Petal, with all her wiles, could seldom get Little Onion to smile.

  “They all like her but Monty loved her,” Tasmin pointed out. “He rarely knew quite what to make of me, but with our Onion it was pure love. No wonder she misses him.”

  “I’ve conceived,” Mary said, quietly.

  Tasmin supposed she had misheard. She looked at her sister in surprise.

  “You heard me correctly—I’ve conceived,” Mary said. “Piet and I have at last mastered sexual intercourse.”

  “I see,” Tasmin remarked. “That always seems to mean babies, if a Berrybender female is involved.”

  “Piet is pleased,” Mary said. “I expect him to be an ideal father.”

  “I expect so too,” Tasmin told her. “Piet likes to do it from the rear, as quadrupeds do,” Mary confided. “It’s his belief that the seed has easier access to the womb if that approach is adopted.”

  Tasmin snorted. “The seed seems to find our eggs with very little difficulty,” she said. “Personally I like to face my customers. I feel like a bitch often enough without going on all fours to mate.”

  “I’m hoping Little Onion will help me as she helped you,” Mary said. “I’m rather unconfident when it comes to babies.”

  “The confidence may arrive with the child,” Tasmin told her. “Hard to be maternal in advance.”

  Petal, getting nowhere in her play with Little Onion, noticed her mother and aunt in conversation and hurried over to inject herself into the situation. Kate Berrybender, who was helping Cook scour some pans, glared at Petal as she passed. Petal generally kept clear of Kate, her youngest aunt.

  “Mary is going to have a baby,” Tasmin told her daughter, without preamble. “A fresh victim for you to torment.”

  Petal’s hair was a cascade of black curls, defiant of the hairbrush.

  “No, there’s enough babies now,” Petal assured them.

  Tasmin wondered if she and Jim had seen the end of baby making. They had been closer since Monty’s death, but it was a sad closeness, lacking in conjugal heat. She remembered her aunt Clarissa, who had somehow kept on reproducing after six deaths in the nursery. Tasmin didn’t consider herself much like Aunt Clarissa. She got up suddenly, leaving Petal to bicker with Mary, and went over to Little Onion, who looked at her gratefully, though the look came from sad eyes. Tasmin sat down beside her, two mothers of a lost boy. No words needed be said; none were. Petey came and sat in his mother’s lap. Petal ran back and tried to shove her way into the same lap, but Tasmin held Petey tight. Petal let be. Something seemed to be amiss with the adults. She accepted Little Onion’s lap and began to hum a song Vicky had taught her.

  Little Onion liked it that Tasmin had come to sit by her. She knew that Tasmin was her friend. They were both, after all, wives of the same man—good wives too, in Little Onion’s opinion. They didn’t quarrel—and even she and her sister Sun Girl had quarreled.

  She meant to do her best for Tasmin and the other children, and yet the ache of the loss of Monty was a pain not easily endured. Of course, many children died. In the tribe many infants died even as they were born. They were not alive long enough for many people to cherish them, as she had cherished Monty. Such an ache as she felt could only heal slowly—it was there like a sore tooth that throbbed if one bit on a nut too hard. In the case of Monty, the nut was memory. She could not stop remembering him as he had been at his happiest, playing with the simple toys she made him, from corncobs, sticks, scraps of leather.

  It made it hard to go on with this journey that seemed without purpose, into country that was farless pleasing than the country of her own people. It was perplexing to her, that whites must be always moving. In her own country she felt confident—she understood the country and could always find sufficient food to eat: roots, berries, nuts. When she was in her country she understood she did not much fear hunger. If her husband was wounded she felt she could find the bark or the herbs that would cure him.

  But how could one be sure of anything, in country one has not been able to study? It took thorough knowledge of a place before its secrets could be understood—and yet survival depended on knowing the secrets of the land.

  Little Onion felt she might confide these worries to Tasmin at some point; she had already confided a few of them to Buffum. But it wouldn’t stop the men. Even in her own tribe the men sometimes insisted on foolish trips.

  When the twins wandered off to play with Talley and Elf, Tasmin gave Little Onion’s hand a squeeze and told her Mary’s news. Little Onion opened her mouth in surprise. Mary was the only one of the whites who was skilled at finding edibles. She and Little Onion often foraged together. One reason Little Onion was so protective of Tasmin was because Tasmin knew so little about feeding herself; and Buffum and Vicky were just as unskilled. None of them could even find a rat’s nest, in a place where rats were plentiful. Mary knew that rats were easy to catch and good to eat, but the other women were horrified by the notion. Little Onion could not imagine why most of the whites had been trained so poorly. Mary could find berries or tubers or wild onions but even she knew little about the plants that could be used as medicines. Piet, though, was very interested in medicinal plants and as knowledgeable about them as Little Onion. Buffum and Vicky could not muster the interest, a mystery to Little Onion, who could not understand why they would not want to be able to cure themselves or their children if they got sick.

  Little Onion meant to do all she could to protect her friend Tasmin and the others, but often, at night, she worried. The Mexican boys were not good sentinels. When Jim was out of camp hunting, Little Onion felt obliged to be especially alert. She could do nothing against enemies like the cholera but she did know how to watch for attackers like the Pawnee boys. She was always urging the company to stay closer together when they traveled—it was the fact that they were so spread out when the Pawnees attacked that enabled the raiders to kill four of them. With High Shoulders dead and Jim often out hunting, the group needed to stay compact and ready.

  It only made sense, and yet it was clear to Little Onion that the others didn’t know how to guard themselves, or be sensible. Perhaps it was because they were so far from their own country. She was baffled herself, much of the time, by cacti or bushes that she had never seen before. Was the plant useful? Or was it deadly? She would have liked to know but there was no one to teach her. She tried little experiments with this plant or that, but she had to be cautious. She didn’t want to poison herself.

  46

  . . . she showed him a heron, standing on one leg . . .

  PETEY LOVED BIRDS. He tried to chase the speedy roadrunners, but they soon outdistanced him. He liked to watch the sparrows that sometimes lit near the campfire, pecking at little seeds or kernels of corn someone had dropped. He would sit for long hours, watching hawks soar in the sky. Sometimes Little Onion would point upward, directing his eye to high skeins of geese. Once she showed him a heron, standing on one leg in a small pond, the end of a frog’s foot sticking out of its mouth.

  The day his father went away Petey was playing with a small wooden bear Jim had carved for him. Petal was always stealing the bear, but at the moment she was with Cook and Little Onion, eating porridge. His mother and Buffum were trying to fix his grandfather’s crutch, which the old man had broken in one of his fits. It was a cold morning— Little Onion was building up the campfire. Talley and Elf were with Vicky. Petey thought it was safe to play with his bear and he was doing just that when the little blue quail were passing near—the quail were chirping and Petey heard them. He saw them slipping through the grass just behind them. They moved so quickly that he couldn’t get a good look at them. But this time they were very close— he began to creep toward them b
ut the quail sped on. Only now and then did he get a clear look as the blue quail stopped to peck at a seed or bit of gravel. Petey wished he could make one of the blue quail into a pet. They didn’t have Mopsy anymore, and he longed for a pet. He decided to follow the quail and perhaps catch one; he wouldn’t hurt it.

  Petey had been out of the camp only a minute or two when Little Onion missed him. She did frequent surveys of the four active children. One thing all the women were in agreement about was that it only took a minute for a child to get in trouble. If there was a snake anywhere near they would find it. If there was a wasp in the vicinity they would get stung.

  Little Onion had a good eye—she just glimpsed Petey as he hurried after the quail. She had heard the blue quail chirping earlier and had been thinking of trying to trap a few. Fat quail were good to eat. But blue quail were speedy—she would need to make a good trap.

  Tasmin, though exasperated with her father for cracking his only crutch in one of his violent distempers, surveyed the children herself and failed to see Petey, but before she could grow alarmed Little Onion waved at her and left the camp; evidently she knew where Petey had got to and was off to retrieve him. Tasmin forgot about it. She and Buffum were trying to wrap the splintered crutch with some light cord—the task was not made easier by Lord Berrybender’s surly mood.

  “I insist that you speak to my wife,” he told Tasmin. “Shameful the way she neglects me. Wives have duties—they are not just free to indulge themselves. Selfish of her to abandon the conjugal bed.”

  “I don’t recall your minding her neglect while your Spanish mistress was available,” Tasmin told him.

  “Not a bit,” Buffum seconded. “Then you didn’t give Vicky the time of day. No time for old familiar Vicky then. You’d rather do gross things in the buggy with that Spanish girl.”

  “Shut up, damn you both! She was a saint!” Lord Berrybender spluttered.

  Just then Elf came rushing up to Buffum, who kissed him. Elf was a tiny mite of a boy, but quick on his feet and possessed of merry black eyes.

  Tasmin smiled at Elf and looked around for her twins. Petal was with Cook, making a great nuisance of herself. She had captured a vital spoon and refused to surrender it. Vicky sat with Talley, a quiet boy who rarely said much.

  Vaguely, at first without alarm, Tasmin registered an absence. The picture wasn’t complete. Something nagged at her. Then she remembered that Petey had wandered off, with Little Onion in pursuit. He had been sitting by himself, playing with his bear—but now where was he?

  “Seen Petey?” she asked Cook. “I thought Little Onion went to get him but I don’t see them. That was some time ago.”

  Wasn’t it some time ago? Time had passed, but how much time she couldn’t say. Where was Little Onion?

  “Probably gathering firewood—it’s chill,” Cook said. She looked around. Where was the helpful girl?

  Tasmin hurried over to Corporal Dominguin, the friendliest and most reliable of the soldiers.

  “Corporal, we seem to have lost Little Onion,” she told him. “I can’t seem to find my boy Petey, either. Have you seen them?”

  Startled, Corporal Dominguin shook his head. He had been idly rolling dice, and watching Buffum, whom he greatly admired. Whenever he could, he did her favors, performed little chores. He had not seen the Indian girl or the little boy but he liked Tasmin and readily agreed to take one of his men and go have a look. Two of the soldiers were cleaning their rifles—they were hopeful that they might see game to shoot at. Lazily they got up and followed Corporal Dominguin.

  Tasmin wished desperately that Jim would show up. For some reason she became frightened—the vast, empty place, filled with perils, was enough to frighten her. She had an urge to race off and find Petey herself, though she realized that she would probably only get lost.

  When Corporal Dominguin came back he just shook his head. In his hand he held Petey’s little bear.

  47

  . . . trying to call the blue quail . . .

  BLUE FOOT HATED whimpering children. He had not wanted to take the child at all but Tay-ha insisted. Women were easier managed if they were allowed their children. Tay-ha was not sure how the brown woman happened to have a white child, but many whites now passed through the country—mixed pairs were not uncommon. They were all disappointed because they had only managed to catch a brown girl when there were at least five salable white women in camp. But there were only four of them, and a number of soldiers with rifles guarded the women.

  “You hit her too hard,” Blue Foot insisted. Tay-ha was very good at ambushes. If he didn’t want to be seen he wasn’t seen. He was already swinging his club when the girl sensed him. She turned and the blow took her in the temple, which was not where he meant to hit her. He swung hard because they were close to the camp and he didn’t want her to scream, but he had meant to hit her in the back of the head. Her own movement caused his miscalculation. They had thrown her, inert and unconscious, over the spare horse and put ten miles between them and the camp before they stopped.

  Still, Tay-ha was ready to admit that he had hit the girl too hard. She had been lifeless as a sack when they raped her. She had not opened her eyes.

  “Draga won’t like this—she wanted us to catch some white women,” Blue Foot complained.

  “I can’t do everything right,” Tay-ha told him. The old man, Snaggle, bent over Little Onion, looking at her closely.

  “She has blood in her eyes and more coming out her ears—she’s dying,” Snaggle told them. “It’s pointless to take her any farther.”

  Little Onion faintly heard the talk, which seemed to come from a great distance. She tried to stroke Petey, to make him stop whimpering, but her hands wouldn’t fully obey her. She and Petey had been squatting, trying to call the blue quail, and the blue quail were listening. They had stopped, listening to Little Onion’s call. Only at the last second did she sense the man with the club who had somehow got behind her. Then she fell into deep darkness, in her head a pain far worse than any she had felt before. In the blackness all she could do was try to soothe Petey so the men would spare him. If they could only survive a day her husband might come.

  Blue Foot was thoroughly disgusted. The white women in the camp would have made them all rich, if they could have caught them. But Tay-ha had to go club a brown girl who was making birdcalls with the child. They would have to go back to Draga’s great slavers’ camp with nothing to show. Any of the white women would have brought big money—but now that prospect was all spoiled. He had wanted to grab one of the white women while she was making water, but the soldiers were too close.

  “Are we going to wait all day?” Snaggle asked. “This girl is ruined.”

  Blue Foot knew it was true. She had blood in her eyes. She could have been a useful slave, but that was not to be.

  “Just finish her, since you ruined her,” he said to Tay-ha.

  He caught the little boy by the ankle, swung him a few times, and threw him as high as he could throw him. While he was swinging the boy, Tay-ha killed the girl. It only required another hard rap.

  The little boy hit the frozen ground. Blue Foot intended for the fall to kill him—he didn’t seem like a strong boy. Old Snaggle went over and inspected him.

  “He’s still breathing,” Snaggle reported. Enraged—why couldn’t anything go right?— Blue Foot looped his rawhide rope around one of the little boy’s feet—then he jumped on his horse and rode off as fast as he could go, through some rocks and some cactus. When he came back Snag-gle was quick to report that the boy was dead.

  “This has been a wasted day,” Blue Foot complained, as the four of them rode south.

  “More than that,” Snaggle reminded him. “We watched that camp for three days.”

  “There were just too many soldiers,” Tay-ha said. “We might catch somebody if we went to Mexico,” Bent Finger suggested. He was the youngest slaver—no one paid much attention to him.

  “We are not going to Mexic
o,” Blue Foot said, in a tone that suggested to Bent Finger that his comments were unwelcome.

  They rode south, under a full moon, for most of the night. Here and there they saw campfires—Comanche campfires, probably. They were on the great war trail that the Comanches used when they made their raids into Mexico. A day’s ride west of the war trail was the big slavers’ camp known as Los Dolores. There, at the moment, the old woman Draga reigned—a woman crueler but more efficient than most of the other slavers.

  “I wish you hadn’t hit that girl so hard,” Blue Foot chided. “I hate going back with no captives to show.”

  “Shut up about it,” Snaggle told him. “Tay-ha didn’t mean to kill her, but what’s done is done.”

  48

  . . . Tasmin came running out, panic in her face.

  I’M EAGER TO SEE TASMIN and the rest,” George Catlin said.

  “Me too,” Kit Carson put in. “We’ll have us a regular reunion.”

  Old Greasy Lake had refused to leave the yellow buffalo, so Kit and Willy had thrown in with George Catlin and set out in search of the Berry-benders. A few days later they had the happy luck to run into Jim Snow, who was packing home a sizable load of buffalo meat, a welcome sight.

  “It’s just like Jim to have buffalo when the rest of us are making do with prairie dog,” Kit remarked.

  Then Tom Fitzpatrick, who had been trapping on the south Canadian with little luck, drifted in, and he also was looking for the Berrybenders.