The Son

Chapter Thirty-seven. Eli McCullough, 1852

A few weeks later Judge Wilbarger’s wife and I were lying naked on her couch, in my mind to spite the judge, in her mind because she was high on laudanum and being naked on the couch was a comfortable place to be. She had sent the Negroes to Austin on errands. She had the sort of face you saw in old books; it was pale and very delicate and I guessed that at one point she’d been the kind of woman that men would have killed to be with. And I guessed that she knew this, and knew it was not true anymore.

“How old are you, really?”

“Nineteen,” I said.

“I don’t care, you know. I just want to know more about you.”

“Seventeen,” I said.

She looked at me.

“Sixteen.”

“Will the number keep going down?”

“No, it’s sixteen.”

“I’ll take that. It’s the perfect age.”

“Is it?”

“For you it is.”

She was quiet. I wondered how it was that a woman like her would ever end up with a man like the judge. I wondered if she had loved him. Then I was thinking about the Comanches.

“Are you mad at me?”

“No,” I said. Then I said, “Why don’t you go back?”

“To England? I’m very respectable here.” She laughed. “No, of course I’m not. But what would I do there?”

“Better than Bastrop, probably.”

“Probably.”

I was looking at her smooth belly and wondering if she’d ever had children, but something told me not to ask, so instead I said, “I don’t understand why you won’t go back. Even I don’t like this place.”

“It’s complicated,” she said. “I can’t explain it.”

IN THE MEANTIME, being in town so much, I began to see the same kid over and over until I was sure he was following me. I knew his name was Tom Whipple; he was thirteen or fourteen, but barely five feet tall and lazy eyed to boot. Finally I caught him waiting for me around the judge’s house, which I took for a bad sign. I followed him home and waylaid him in the woods behind his house.

Though I had him on the ground, for some reason he didn’t look afraid. “You’re the wild Indian,” he said.

“I am.”

“Well, the Indians killed my father. I guess now you’ll kill me, too.”

“You have been following me,” I said.

“They say you go around stealing horses from people.”

“I borrow them.”

“They say you kill people’s chickens and hogs.”

“I quit doing that weeks ago.”

“They say that someone is going to shoot you.”

I snorted. “Well, I would like to see them try it. I could whip every one of these alfalfa desperados.”

“My daddy was a Ranger,” he said.

I’d been in town long enough to know this wasn’t true; his father had been a surveyor, and the whole party had been killed by Comanches. Or so it was told. Most people couldn’t tell an Apache from a Comanche from a white man dressed in buckskin.

It was quiet.

“Show me how to steal a horse,” he said.

THE NEXT DAY I told Ellen about Whipple lurking around the house. We went out her back door and cut through the woods until we were out of town, then went to a swimming hole I knew about. I brought a pair of deer hides for us to lie on.

“These have a smell to them,” she said. “Are they very fresh?”

“A few weeks.”

“My little savage.” She was lying with the sun on her, her legs spread, her arms at her sides. There was a breeze but the rocks underneath us were warm. I could see the waving green of the cypresses and the bare branches of the oaks, and the sky in the narrow place above the stream. It had been like this every day for a month, and it would stay like this until the summer. It was not a bad life.

“Have you ever had another affair?”

“You are a man, aren’t you?”

“I guess.”

“Men always want to know.”

“Why shouldn’t we?”

“Do you want the real answer or the nice one?”

“The real one,” I said.

“You’re my first. I have never felt as good as the way you make me feel.”

I got up.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought being half Comanche you wouldn’t mind it.”

“I don’t care.”

“Come back.” She patted the ground next to her and I did what she said. After we lay awhile longer she said, “You know there are times I think I might open my legs for nearly anyone, just to keep from going crazy. There are times when I think I would open my legs for Henry.”

“They will sure as shit lynch you.”

“Over a black man, yes. Do you know he won’t even look at me?”

“He’s a Negro,” I said.

“But still he won’t look at me. He knows they would kill him for it, so he’s afraid of me. I feel sick about it all the time. He is more scared of me than Roy.”

I was quiet.

“If I ever move back to England, that will be why.”

I slid up next to her and lifted one leg and eased inside. Then I had the urge to stop and hold her. She wanted me to continue with the rutting. When we finished she fell asleep. I sat up and looked around, watching the stream going over the rocks. There was a mockingbird going through its songbook.

When I opened my eyes it was late.

“When are Cecelia and Henry getting back?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I sent them to Austin.”

“We should get dressed.”

She didn’t move. Her long hair, which wasn’t quite gray and wasn’t quite brown, was tangled all around her.

“You know if you keep sending them on errands like that, one day they will run to Mexico.”

“I certainly hope so.”

“And you know they know about us.”

“I certainly hope not.”

“Of course they do.”

“Well, Roy will shoot us both.”

“They’ll never tell.”

“Why not?”

“Well, they like you better than him, for one. And for two, they’re niggers.”

“What does that mean?” she said.

“You know.” I watched as she put on her underthings.

“Not really, I’m afraid.”

I knew I was in the right but still I felt my bristles go up.

“If you don’t like the judge, why don’t you just leave him?”

She was shaking her head.

“It’s not as hard as it sounds.”

“Sure,” she said. “I suppose we could run away together.”

“We should.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying, honey.”

She pulled back her hair and tied it and then went into the bag for her laudanum.

“You think you’re a bit superior to me, don’t you.” She held her fingers together. “Just a tiny bit.”

I shrugged.

“Well, you’re right.”

She offered me the laudanum. “Would you like to try some?”

“Not really.”

“Good,” she said. “Good for you.”

She took the trail back to town and I waited half an hour or so then walked out after her. There was another set of footprints across the rocks.

THE JUDGE’S THOROUGHBREDS knew me so well that it was not really stealing. Tom Whipple knew nothing about horses. The first time I took him into the stables, they nearly kicked him through the wall. I helped him onto the saddle, then got up behind him.

When we got back, Whipple was so excited he couldn’t stop talking, and, as we snuck away through the woods, it occurred to me that he was going to do something stupid. I watched his feet as he walked ahead of me.

A FEW DAYS later he tried to catch his neighbor’s horse, a hog-backed Belgian draft animal, and instead caught a load of turkey shot. Luckily the barn door stopped most of it. But that did not stop him from blabbering.

I EXPECTED ELLEN to see me in jail but she didn’t. When I mentioned her, the sheriff just shook his head.

“Son, I am tryin to figger how you could have picked a worse person to connubiate with.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Were you drunk?”

“Sometimes.”

“Them aborigines must have scrambled your head, boy. I really had my hopes for you.”

“Is there gonna be a real trial, you think?”

“If there is,” he said, “it will be the shortest one in history.”