The Son

Chapter Thirty-four. Eli McCullough, Early 1852

I arrived in Bastrop and found the address of my new home, a rickety frame house with multiple rooms added, built before statehood when materials were thin. But there was a large front yard with flowers and grass and a whitewashed fence.

My stepmother was in her forties, with a harsh expression and a tightly tied bonnet. She looked like she’d been raised on sour milk and when the Indians thought of white people, she is the person they imagined, from the look she gave, she did not exactly think me nickel-plated, either. Her two sons were both taller than me and they smirked. I made up my mind to bash their heads.

“You must be Eli.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, we found some clothes for you. You can change out of those things. You better give that pistol to Jacob.”

The taller one was reaching for my Colt. I slapped his hand away.

“We lock our guns up here,” she said.

I slapped his hand away again.

“Mother.”

She looked at me for a long time and then said: “Let him be.”

I had a pallet in the same room as the other two boys, who were eyeing my bow, knife, pistol; everything I owned. As soon as I’d been given the tour I went on a walk, and, after losing my stepbrothers, who were trying to follow me, I buried the pistol and everything else I cared about in my bag, taking only my bow and arrow and a small wallet of things I did not think would interest anyone.

On the way back I saw my stepbrothers walking in circles, trying to cut my trail, considered ambushing them but decided against it, and made my way back to the house.

That night we had salt pork, which I would not touch. I ate most of the corn bread and all the butter, though. The family was originally from East Texas and did not believe in buying wheat. The fact they had butter was a small miracle.

I could not fault my stepmother as she had bought me a new set of clothes, including shoes, and the next morning I was dressed up like her sons, tripping over my shoes the first time I walked in them, which inspired great hilarity in everyone but myself.

The state was paying for my schooling, on the judge’s orders, and there was one room and a very young teacher trying to teach two dozen children of all ages. After sitting a few minutes I stood up so I would not fall asleep. I felt sorry for the other students, who could not imagine saying no to this teacher or anyone else; they were going to spend entire lives doing things just like this. I felt so sorry for them I nearly burst out crying. The teacher forgot how nice she was and came after me with a paddle and I let her chase me awhile before going out the window.

I spent the rest of the day building snares and setting them, walking in and out of people’s barns. I stole a mare, rode her for an hour, and returned her to her stall. I watched a pretty older woman reading a book on her back porch, her fine brown hair going gray, just wearing a shift on account of it being warm. She adjusted one breast and then the other and then reached up under her shift and left her hand there, which was too much. I ran off and had a few moments to myself. I thought I could probably make it in Bastrop.

When I got back home, my stepmother was waiting.

“I heard you left school,” she said, “and I heard you were seen on Mr. Wilson’s horse and I heard you were walking around the yard of the Edmunds, looking in their windows.”

How she had learned this I did not know. I expected her to check my hands for the mark of Onan. Then I noticed a strange smell. Something was burning and I went to the fireplace and saw that some person had put my moccasins, bow, arrows, and loincloth into the flames.

“The man who built that bow is dead,” I told her. “It cannot be replaced.”

“You need to put those days behind you, Eli.”

If she had been male I would have killed her and not thought another thing about it. Later I would consider this and decide we were both lucky.

“Jacob and Stuart brought your shoes back for you.”

“I’m not wearing those fucking things,” I said.

I went to my pallet and took the wool blanket off it, then went into the kitchen. I took a knife and some things I found in the drawers, a ball of sisal, a needle and thread, a half loaf of corn pone.

“Eli, you may take whatever you want,” said my stepmother. “It all belongs to you. This is your home now.”

It was a queer way to act. She was either softheaded or a Quaker.

I WAS SURE I’d be followed by my stepbrothers so the trail I left them led right to a patch of quicksand. From there I made some footprints that led to a rattlesnake den. Finally I went to the tree where I’d buried my things and dug up my bag, which contained my revolver and various other pieces of gear, all in fine condition.

After walking another hour I found a high overlook with a stream running in front of it and plenty of shade. I made a fire and fell asleep wrapped in the blanket, listening to the wolves howl. I howled back and we went on for a while like that. I kept my Colt under my knees, Indian-style, but I knew I was not going to need it for anything, the country was too settled up.

The next morning I hacked down a bunch of saplings with my stolen bowie knife, which was indeed a very good knife, heavy but nicely balanced; even after batoning through some of the saplings it was not dulled at all. I wondered if Jim Bowie had actually owned it but by then for him to own all the knives attributed to him he would have had to live a thousand years. I made a drying rack and a frame for a brush arbor. But there was not much point in working so hard. I lay down in the sun and looked out over the green hills; I had forgotten how warm it was in the lowlands. I thought of all my friends buried up on the snowy Llano, cried for a while, and fell asleep.

That afternoon I shot two does and skinned and flayed out the meat and hung it on the racks to dry. I teased out the long sinew from the backbones and cleaned and washed the stomachs. One of the legbones I sharpened into a passable scraper and fleshed both the hides. By then the sun was almost down so I built a fire and had a fine supper of venison rubbed with cedar berries, and marrow mixed with dried sugarberries. The next day I decided to find a bee tree.

After a week I’d built another bow and a dozen arrows so inferior to the one Grandfather had made me that it put me into a conniption every time I drew it. I made a new pair of moccasins and a breechcloth, then went back into Bastrop. I walked directly to the backyard of my stepmother, where my stepbrothers kept the hogs they had threatened to feed me to. I shot all the hogs full of arrows.

Their mutt was easily converted with the gift of a bloody piglet, after which we were friends for life. He followed me back into the countryside where my brothers were afraid to go, as they’d been told they would be stolen by Indians. Of course the Indians would not have stolen them; they were more the type to be knocked on the head.

I stayed out a month, missing Toshaway and Prairie Flower and all the others. I guessed Nuukaru and Escuté were out there somewhere in the snow, but how I would find them, I had no idea.

I WENT BACK to town often, mostly to steal things that seemed interesting, like horses, which I rode for a while, then left them tied wherever I got tired of them. I let myself into people’s houses and enjoyed fresh-baked pie and roasted chicken and all the other bounties of civilization, but when the sun got low I always headed back where I belonged.

It did not take long to figure out that the nicest house in town belonged to a judge by the name of Wilbarger, who was the enemy of my friend in Austin. I would sit in the trees overlooking his backyard, listening to the stream there. Occasionally his wife would come out and read books on the porch. She was the woman I’d seen in the shift, very pretty, somewhere in her forties, but very thin and sad. Everything about her was pale. Her hair, skin, eyes. I did not see how a creature like her might survive in such a sunblasted place, and the servants must have agreed because they were always looking in on her, as if they expected her to die or run off at any moment.

A few times a week she would go walking by herself in the woods, which was safe for someone with sense, but probably not for her, so I would follow at a safe distance. She would walk a stream until she guessed she was alone, then strip naked and swim in some convenient hole. She had a few favorites but they all got more traffic than she supposed. The first time I saw her go under she held her breath so long I nearly dove in to pull her out. She and the judge had as much in common as a Thoroughbred and a cross-eyed donkey.

After swimming she would lie on the rocks in the sun and I would squint to get my look. There were wisps of gray in the hair she had, which was something I had not thought about. I felt certain the judge had not been in there recently. All thunder and no lightning.

AT THE EDGE of town one afternoon I was stopped by a man who identified himself as the sheriff’s deputy. He was not pointing his gun but he said he needed to take me in for some questions. I could have slipped him but I was bored and I wondered what jail would be like.

It was not bad. The judge’s wife came and cooked for me every day, three meals with pie. Of course I recognized her and she was even prettier up close than from a distance. She was tall and thin with gray eyes and delicate bones and a pleasant manner; one look and you knew she was an import. The local women, most of whom could have wrestled a razorback hog, must have hated her. She had an accent that made her hard to understand but I knew my brother would have liked it. She was English, they said.

Judge Wilbarger, whose Thoroughbreds I’d been riding some nights, came and gave me a lecture on morality.

“I understand you have been through a hard time,” he said. “But we cannot have you stealing horses and killing people’s livestock.”

I nodded.

“I’ve hanged men for stealing horses.”

I nodded again. I hadn’t actually stolen any horses, just borrowed them and returned them, probably better behaved than they’d been before I got to them.

“If you are caught breaking the law again, you will be severely punished. This is your only warning. Tell me you understand me, boy. I know you speak English, you were with those Indians not even three years.”

“The wind blows softly through the flowers,” I said, in Comanche. “Also, you smell like a buffalo’s cunt.”

“Speak English,” said Wilbarger.

“I have stimulated myself to your wife over thirty times.”

“English, boy.”

Then I didn’t say anything.

Finally he got up. “You’re smarter than you act, boy. You can be tamed and I will do it if you make me.”

They held me three more days but after Wilbarger left, the sheriff let me out of the cell to walk around.

“Don’t piss him off,” he said. “They told me you came in with scalps but you are gonna get yourself in a tight you can’t get out of.”

I shrugged.

“Those were Indian scalps, weren’t they?”

“One was a white man,” I said, in English. “But he had been living in Mexico.”

He looked at me and burst out laughing. I started laughing as well.

“Is it true all they had you doing all day is riding and shooting?”

“There was a lot of rutting as well,” I said.

“Some old fat squaw, I imagine.”

I shook my head. “You are only allowed to do it with the young ones. Once they get married they are off-limits.”

I could see this idea appealed to him but he did not believe me.

“The one who popped my cherry was twenty and the others were even younger.”

“Son of a bitch,” he said. “Maybe they will kidnap me.”

Then I felt low speaking that way about Prairie Flower. And Hates Work, Big Water Falling, and Always Visiting Someone. It occurred to me that they were the last people in the world who had actually loved me. I got up and went over to the window. I could feel myself getting dauncy.

I heard the sheriff go back to his desk and move some things around and then he came up next to me. He handed me a glass of whiskey.

“So what the hell happened?” he said. “Why’d you come back?”

“Everyone died,” I said.

THINKING ABOUT THE Indians had put me in a state and when they let me out I went back to my stepmother’s house, thinking I would make good with her, but no one was home. I felt low and I was tired of being by myself. Still no one came home. I got restless. I went to my stepbrothers’ room, where I found several nice steel fishhooks, which I pocketed, and a large collection of wrinkled pornographic postcards, which I left in the kitchen for my stepmother. Then I took all their gunpowder and percussion caps and headed back into the woods.

I SLEPT UNDER the brush arbor or under the open sky, set traps, caught raccoons and tanned their hides, killed deer and tanned them as well. I found a pool by an old beaver dam where the water was brown from oak leaves and I buried the hides in the mud under the water. After a few weeks the hair slipped and they were nicely tanned, just stiff.

Among the whites in town I was as popular as the tax collector. I knew they wouldn’t put up with much more horse stealing and stock-killing so I mostly stayed where it was natural. But eventually it got to where the deer and wolves did not cut through my lonesome, not to mention I was in a fierce rutting mood, so I went back to check on the judge’s wife.

Eventually she came out on the porch. One of the Negroes brought her tea. I was in dire need of stimulation and afterward I fell asleep. When I woke up she was not on the porch and the sun had sunk a good ways. The judge had a few shoats and piglets in a pen and looking at them I got very hungry, I had forgotten to eat for nearly a day. I arrowed one of the piglets but despite all the squealing no one came, I took my time and went into his smokehouse and got a big helping of salt and carried the piglet back to camp.

A few hours later I was lying there, my belly full of the crispy meat, watching the sun go down from my perch. I could not remember why the Comanches hated pork so much. It was likely the best thing I had ever tasted. The wolves howled and I howled back and they howled back at me.

THE NEXT MORNING the wife went on her daily walk to the swimming hole, but instead of following her I waited until her two Negroes went out on an errand, likely to hump, then slipped into the kitchen. I liberated a bottle of sweet wine and several cigars, smoked one of the cigars and nearly threw up. I was sure I would be sick. I lay there on a couch while my head spun. It was a nice house with wood paneling, thick rugs, paintings everywhere. The couch was firm like no one had ever sat on it.

When I opened my eyes someone was standing over me and I was running before I even woke up. I was nearly to the door when I stopped.

It was the judge’s wife.

“You don’t have to run,” she said. “You looked so peaceful that I didn’t want to wake you.”

I didn’t say anything.

“It is nice to see you again,” she said. “I mean, not behind bars. Though I’ve also seen you out in the yard.”

I didn’t want to evidence against myself, but I didn’t want to lie, either. I stayed quiet.

“So. How is the wild Indian?”

“I am fine,” I said.

“People say you’re very dangerous.”

“Only to hogs.”

“Are you responsible for our missing piglet?”

“Depends who’s asking.”

“We were just going to eat her anyway. Or was it a him? I can’t remember.” She shrugged. “You can sit down, you know. I’m not going to tell anyone you were here.”

“That is all right,” I said.

“Did you eat it? They say you just like to kill them.”

“That one I ate.”

“Well, I am glad.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You really should have a seat. I can see you were smoking one of Roy’s cigars. They’re awfully strong.”

At the mention of the cigars, I began to feel green at the gills again. I decided I would stay a few minutes. If the judge came home, I would kill him and go back to the Indians.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“This is my house.”

“I mean in Bastrop.”

“The judge was the business partner of my first husband.”

“Did he pull stakes?”

“He caught the fever in Indianola. The heat here was quite a shock. As were the insects.”

“They are worse in Indianola,” I said. “Along with everything else.”

“I suppose you could slather yourself with mud.”

There was something about the way she looked at me and I went and sat on the couch. She sat down as well.

“Are you going to call for the sheriff?”

“I’m thinking about it. You’re not going to scalp me, are you?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“How old are you?” she said.

“Nineteen.” Of course I was only sixteen but on account of being in the sun I never had carbuncles.

“Did they treat you badly?”

“The sheriff?”

She thought this was funny. “The Comanches, of course.”

“They adopted me.”

“But you were of a lower caste than a natural-born, no?”

“I was mostly the same. I was a member of their band.”

“That is very interesting.”

“My Comanche family died,” I said. “That’s why I came back.”

Her face went all motherly. She really was a sweet woman. But before we got too far down the path of righteousness I said, “I’m going to drink some of the judge’s port wine and then I’m going to steal one of his horses. Do you want some or not?”

“I could have a drink with you,” she said. She wrinkled her nose at me. “But would you object to a bath?”

“Are you gonna give it to me?”

She acted surprised but I could tell she wasn’t.