Boone's Lick

by Larry McMurtry

  “Good—I need to find Dick Cecil quick,” Ma said. “Introduce yourselves to the father, children—and you too, Rosie. If we’re going to be traveling together we need to get the names straight.”

  When the big priest smiled it was like sunlight shining through a haystack: his whole beard moved, and he had a lot of beard. We all said our names, and Rosie held up baby Marcy, who immediately grabbed a fistful of that beard. Marcy didn’t want to turn loose, either—Rosie had to pry her fingers off it.

  “My name is Emile Villegagnon,” the priest said, rolling the sound out. “That’s easy for a Frenchman, but I’ve found it’s too much for the American tongue so I’m just Père Villy to most people.”

  “Smart thinking,” Granpa said. “A man could choke himself trying to say a name like yours.”

  G.T. and Neva and I were nervous about what Uncle Seth would think when he came back to the wagon and saw a big priest with a brown robe sitting on the wagon seat beside Ma. Uncle Seth was apt to get testy when he wasn’t allowed to control the planning, and Ma sure hadn’t allowed him to control much of it lately. She had already tacked two people on to the expedition without so much as a fare-you-well, and we had only been gone from Boone’s Lick part of one day.

  In spite of his vow to walk the earth Father Villy sat on the wagon seat and chatted with Ma the whole afternoon. The rocking of the wagon was so restful that I dozed, much of the time. If anybody kept a lookout it was G.T., who still had bears on his mind.

  “I think you may have run Seth off for good,” Aunt Rosie said, as we were pulling into Glasgow—most of the town was on a bluff, with the dock down below, on the river.

  “Who is Seth?” the priest asked.

  “Her brother-in-law. She just run him off with her sass,” Granpa informed him. He seemed to be more and more set against Ma—maybe it was because she wouldn’t stop for his naps.

  “I expect Seth will be at the docks, waiting for us,” Ma said. “I hope Mr. Seven Days is with him.”

  “You wouldn’t be speaking of Charlie Seven Days, would you?” the priest asked.

  “Why, yes—we met him this morning,” Ma said. “I asked him to come with us. Do you know him?”

  “Since he was a boy,” Father Villy said. “I taught him his letters, in a little school I ran for a while up at Fort Union—that’s where the Yellowstone River comes into the Missouri.”

  “I would as soon swallow ice as wade in the Yellowstone,” Granpa said. “They say it’s a mighty cold river.”

  “Chill, yes,” Father Villy said. “The fact is I gave Charlie his name. When I explained that the Lord made the world in six days and rested on the seventh he decided to call himself Charlie Seven Days. He has a Shoshone name too, of course, but that one’s even harder on the tongue than mine. I think it had something to do with the sound a beaver makes when it slaps its tail on the water. It’s a sound you won’t hear too often now. They’ve about trapped out the beaver.”

  By the time we came to the docks the sun seemed to be setting right into the river, upstream where it curved to the west.

  “I hear fiddling, and some fool’s blowing on a jug,” Granpa said.

  Granpa Crackenthorpe was right, for once. There was a flatboat tied up at the docks, with several jolly boatmen doing a dance on the deck. Besides the fiddle and the jug, a skinny man was playing the Jew’s harp. Uncle Seth was dancing on deck, too—Charlie Seven Days, who wasn’t on deck, was holding Sally, Uncle Seth’s mare. Father Villy jumped off the wagon and went to talk to his old pupil, who didn’t seem a bit surprised to see him.

  Ma was watching Uncle Seth dance on the riverboat.

  “Drunk—he’s missing his steps,” Ma said. “You fools who thought I ran him off don’t know Seth like I do. I couldn’t run him off if I tried.”

  To my astonishment, before the wagon was even fully stopped, Ma put me in charge of the mules and skipped up on deck herself, to dance with Uncle Seth. Aunt Rosie looked a little pouty at that development.

  “Mary Margaret has always got her way—except maybe with Dick,” she said.

  It wasn’t a minute later that she stuck Marcy in my arms and jumped down herself—before you could say Jack Sprat she was on deck too, dancing with Father Villy. For a big man who had stepped on tacks earlier in the day he seemed to be light on his feet. After the first fiddler quit—to cut himself a chaw of tobacco—Granpa saw his chance and began to saw away on his fiddle. Next thing I knew the dancers had switched partners—Ma was dancing with the priest and Aunt Rosie with Uncle Seth.

  G.T. saw a big snapping turtle resting on the bank and decided to go and harass it—G.T. hated snapping turtles. But then Charlie Seven Days strolled over and persuaded him to leave it alone. He talked to the big turtle as if it were a dog and the snapper picked itself up and waddled back into the river.

  In a while the moon came up and made the water silvery. Neva had jumped on the boat by this time—she was dancing with herself. If Uncle Seth was drunk, I couldn’t tell it: he and Ma were swirling all over the deck. Aunt Rosie and Father Villy weren’t doing badly, either.

  The only people left in the wagon were Marcy and myself—and Marcy didn’t particularly like me. She had a sullen look on her face, as if she were just daring me to do something that would make her cry. I would have liked to be on the boat with the dancers. Uncle Seth had worn out, but not Ma—she was dancing with one of the boatmen. But I knew it was my duty to stay with the mules.

  Uncle Seth finally saw me in the wagon, looking left out, because he strolled over and took Marcy, who immediately began to bubble and coo.

  “Go stomp around a little, Shay, before the fiddlers wear out,” he said. “I’ll tote this baby for a while.”

  Aunt Rosie grabbed my arm the minute I stepped onto the boat, and danced with me until the fiddlers quit. I got my feet tangled up two or three times, which just made her chuckle.

  “I don’t know that you’re going to be much of a ladies’ man, Shay,” she said. “That’s what I like about you.”

  The jug man and the skinny fellow with the Jew’s harp quit; they walked off up the hill toward town. The first fiddler played a few more tunes with Granpa, who was just getting warmed up. It did him no good—the dancers were mostly beginning to flag. Ma walked over and had a little discussion with Uncle Seth. Aunt Rosie sat on deck, fanning herself. Father Villy was cooling his feet in the river.

  Neva wouldn’t stop dancing, although the only musician left was Granpa and he was a scratchy fiddler. Neva wanted me to jog with her, but my feet had begun to feel like I had lead in my socks.

  I had lived on the Missouri River all my life, and I liked having it near—only then it had just been a part of home, and now it wasn’t, anymore. Pretty as it was, with the moonlight shining on it, it had stopped seeming like our old friendly river. Uncle Seth told me it was more than two thousand miles long, which was a lot more miles than I could imagine. A river that ran on for such a stretch could easily swallow a little wagon full of Cecils.

  Ma knew that I was prone to glooms—thick, heavy glooms that settled on me and slowed me down so that I had a hard time moving, or thinking, or doing much of anything. When she saw me standing on the deck of the boat, something about the way I looked or the way I stood must have told her one of my glooms had come on me.

  “Sherman, come here,” she said—it was only at such times that Ma called me by my full name.

  It made G.T. jealous, because she never called him by his full name, which was Grant Thaddeus Cecil.

  “You’re homesick, I guess,” Ma said, once we had walked a little way down the riverbank, out of the hearing of the others.

  I was homesick, but my feelings were so mixed that I couldn’t find words for them—I don’t think Ma even expected me to. She rubbed my neck and tried to hug me, but I stepped away. Even though I was glad Ma called me over, I didn’t want anybody hugging me, just then.

  “Sherman, would you just give it a chance?” Ma aske
d. “Wyoming might be a fine place to live, for all you know.”

  Then baby Marcy began to holler—Uncle Seth couldn’t soothe her, and neither could Aunt Rosie.

  “She’s hungry—she wants the teat,” Ma said. “That’s one thing I’ve never been shut of for long—hungry babies.”

  “That Indian Charlie can talk to snapping turtles and have them mind him,” G.T. said. He had seen Ma walk off with me—of course, it made him jealous, immediately.

  “Was he talking to it in Indian language, or in turtle language?” Ma asked, before walking off to nurse Marcy.

  “What do you think, Shay?” G.T. asked. The question had not occurred to him.

  “I expect it was Indian language,” I said, taking a guess. “I don’t think turtles have a language.”

  “Maybe not, but they can listen,” G.T. said. “That one was listening to every word Charlie said.”

  Pretty soon Uncle Seth took his horse and all the mules up the street to the town—he was hoping to find a livery stable. Aunt Rosie went with him. I imagine both of them were really hoping to find a saloon.

  The rest of us made pallets under the wagon and soon bedded down. Father Villy slept with us—he had a snore that made Granpa’s seem like a birdsong. I believe Charlie Seven Days slept in his canoe, which was tied up by the big flatboat.

  The next morning, as soon as there was a shading of light in the east, the boatmen began to rattle around in on the boat, determined to get an early start. Cocks were crowing, up on the hill where the town was. It was so misty for half an hour that I couldn’t see Aunt Rosie or Uncle Seth, but I heard some wild geese honking, high overhead, and a bull bellowed from somewhere way upstream.

  “It’s a bear, I can hear it plain,” G.T. insisted.

  “You oaf, it’s a bull,” Neva said, and for once she was right.

  Ma routed us out—the priest too—and pretty soon we had the mules hitched and the wagon solidly settled on the flatboat, with a chain around the axle and chunks of wood under the wheels to keep it from rolling around.

  A few minutes after sunup we left the Glasgow shore: Ma and Uncle Seth, Aunt Rosie and Granpa Crackenthorpe, me and G.T. and Neva and baby Marcy, big-bearded Father Villy and Charlie Seven Days, the man who could talk to turtles and whose real name meant the sound a beaver makes when it slaps its tail on the water.

  It was good-bye to Missouri—I didn’t know if we’d ever be back.

  BOOK II

  The Holy Road

  1

  I EXPECT one reason most boatmen are stumpy little fellows is that there’s no great amount of room on a boat. There were four boatmen on our boat, besides ourselves; when all was fine and fair, everybody lolled around on deck, fishing or playing cards or doing whatever they wanted to do. But it was not always fine and fair—we’d not been gone from Glasgow two hours when some clouds came scudding in, almost as low as a flight of ducks—big raindrops began to splatter down. There was a little shed of sorts, at one end of the boat, which was where we all huddled when the downpour came. The only travelers who didn’t seek cover were Father Villy and Charlie Seven Days. Charlie stood on the edge of the deck with his shirt off—to him the rain was just a refreshing bath.

  “I hope you have a better opinion of Mr. Seven Days now,” Ma said, watching the rain splatter down. I believe she was bored by the lagging conversation, the result of the fact that Uncle Seth and Aunt Rosie had had a late night.

  “I have no opinion of anything or anybody,” Uncle Seth replied.

  “Being surly is no way to start a trip, Seth,” Ma said. She herself seemed to be in first-rate spirits.

  “Well, I didn’t expect it to cloud up so quick,” Uncle Seth said.

  “It’s just a shower,” Aunt Rosie said.

  “Yes, but fish don’t bite when it’s this wet,” one of the boatmen said, the skinny one who liked to play the Jew’s harp. His name was Joe.

  “Joe, that’s erroneous,” Uncle Seth said. “It’s wet all the time for a fish, remember?”

  “Go to hell, this ain’t your boat!” Joe said. He was a testy little fellow.

  While we all watched, Father Villy walked to the edge of the boat, stripped off his robe, stood there naked for a minute, and then dove in the water. Before we knew it he had swum all the way to the east bank.

  “I guess a priest can just go naked when he wants to,” Aunt Rosie said, a little shocked.

  “Villy was always that way,” Granpa said. “He shucks off when he feels like it.”

  “Do you like him, Seth?” Ma asked.

  “Well, he’s large—that could be useful if there’s a fight,” Uncle Seth said. “Another advantage is that he can marry people. On a long expedition like this somebody might get the itch to be hitched.”

  “It won’t be me, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Aunt Rosie said.

  “A man Seth’s age who has never been married doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Ma said.

  Ma and Uncle Seth went on joshing and bickering, just as they would have if we’d been at home. Charlie Seven Days had just eased his canoe into the water—I walked over to watch.

  “I am just going to look for snags and sandbars,” he said. “You’re welcome to come if you’re not busy.”

  The problem of snags and sandbars is one boatmen have to deal with every day of their lives, if they happen to be on the Missouri River. Trees wash down and wedge themselves in the channel sometimes just below the surface. No boatman can spot them all, because looking into the Missouri is like looking into a cup of coffee—if not worse. Of course, Charlie couldn’t see beneath the surface any better than anybody else, but he was quick to probe with his paddle if he suspected a snag, and more often than not he was right.

  The shower soon blew on through, and a bright sun came out. The sky above the river got bigger and bigger and bluer and bluer. Birds of all sorts flitted around the water’s edge—the sky above was thick with ducks and geese, one bunch flying right behind another. I stopped feeling homesick and began to feel lively. We were finally on our way upriver, headed for a big adventure.

  While we were paddling along Father Villy came swimming back from the far shore. He swam beside the canoe for a while, flopping around in the water like a big hairy water animal.

  “This water is nearly as muddy as mud,” he said, as he swam away.

  Charlie Seven Days began to teach me how to spot snags—it meant staying alert to little patterns of water.

  “See that ripple?” Charlie said, pointing at a patch of water just upstream.

  At first I didn’t see the ripple. The surface of the river was never steady for long: there would always be little waves, or a fish would jump and go back down with a splash, or a waterbird would skim the surface and disturb the water. We had already seen several muskrats, but it didn’t take a critter the size of a muskrat to disturb the water. Even a water bug could do it, skipping along. But, by looking close, I finally did see the ripple Charlie was talking about, just a little V where the water edged around something hidden just underneath it. Sure enough, when Charlie probed underneath it with his paddle, he struck a snag. I soon got so I could spot the ripples myself—I wasn’t as expert at it as Charlie, of course, but I was sharp-eyed enough that I could save the boat from getting stuck, most times.

  Sandbars were harder to spot, because the river just surged right over them, with no change the eye could spot.

  “I keep a watch for cranes and herons,” Charlie said. “They like to set down where the water is shallow.”

  On the west side of the river there would now and then be a good break in the trees—I could see stretches of brown prairie and was hoping any minute to spot my first buffalo, but when I asked Charlie about buffalo he shook his head.

  “We will be lucky if we see buffalo,” he said.

  I was shocked. Pa and Uncle Seth had always talked about the great herds of buffalo that covered the prairies. They claimed a hunter could just stand at the edg
e of the herd and shoot as many as he wanted, and they bragged about how good buffalo liver tasted, and buffalo tongue. Uncle Seth even explained how he liked to sprinkle a little bile out of the spleen, to give the meat more flavor.

  “But I thought there were millions of them,” I said.

  “Not along the Holy Road—not now,” Charlie said. “Animals won’t stay in places where too many people shoot at them.”

  When we got back to the boat I took the matter up with Uncle Seth, who looked a little hangdog.

  “Charlie’s right—they’re scarce now—too many immigrants,” he said. “I expect we’ll scare up a few when we get to Wyoming, if that’s where we’re going.”

  Ma was washing clothes. One day on the river and she already felt the need of a big wash. The wet clothes were spread out on the roof of the little shed, drying. The boatmen, though they lived on the water, could not be described as clean and tidy. They looked at Ma as if she were crazy. Aunt Rosie was dozing in a little spot of shade, and Neva and G.T. were playing a dice game with the priest, using borrowed dice.

  When Uncle Seth raised the question of where we were going, Ma sort of cocked her head.

  “Where else would we be going, if not Wyoming?” she asked. “That’s where they’re building the new forts—where would Dick be, if not in Wyoming?”

  Uncle Seth shrugged. “This west is a big place,” he said. “Ideal for a wandering man. It’s a long sail up to Fort Union—Dick could be anyplace.”

  “Fort Union, that’s too north,” Granpa said. “You’re apt to need snowshoes, when you’re that far north.”

  For some reason Ma wasn’t satisfied with Uncle Seth’s answer, though it seemed reasonable to me. Pa went where he wanted to—he had no fondness for carpentry and might shy away from fort building if he got the chance. Uncle Seth was right about one thing: the west was big. Already the sky looked bigger than the sky over Boone’s Lick—and we hadn’t even been going upriver a whole day.