María’s footsteps are easily discerned from the vaqueros’ but I am constantly fooled by the light feet of Consuela and her daughter Flores. And by Miranda and Lupe Jimenez. If they see me, they look away—they all now suspect I have designs on them, though in fact I am hoping they are someone else.
If several hours (which feel like weeks) pass in which I have not seen her, I’ll pick up a few worthless papers and stroll around the house as if on an errand, and, if the door to the library is open, I will go and pretend to find some book or pamphlet, for instance,
The Record of Registered Brands (1867)—
or something equally useless—but of course María does not know better. She thinks I am being diligent, and we’ll speak for half an hour, and then she’ll apologize for interfering with my work and take her things and go elsewhere, while meanwhile all my blood, or whatever vital force that is in me, sinks down into the earth.
Today I was in the kitchen, eating a plum, and she walked in and asked what I was doing and without answering, I impulsively offered her the plum, from which I had already taken two bites, and without hesitation she took it and had a dainty bite, looking at me the entire time. Then she abruptly left. I put the plum to my mouth and held it there until common sense forced me to eat the rest of it.
I cannot imagine making love to her. It seems disrespectful somehow. Every evening she plays the piano; I have moved the divan into the parlor (it properly belongs there, I lied to her) so that I can close my eyes and feel how close she is. She seems to think this a proper time for us to keep company, as she never tries to escape. Cannot stop reliving the moment in the library (her hand on mine), I curse myself for not responding, for not returning her touch or even leaning against her—this is likely the reason she has not done it again. Or perhaps she was simply being sympathetic, and the world I have invented for us exists only in my own mind. Just the thought leaves me hollowed out.
J
ULY 6, 1917
My father’s deadline for María to leave has come and gone. Was beginning to feel better until he found me this morning.
“Pete, I am going to Wichita Falls. I will be back in one week, at which point the Garcia woman will have made her absquatulation. I have always let you do whatever you want, but this . . .” He looked around my office, as if the right words might be found among my books. “ . . . this is not adjunctive to the forwarding of the design.”
“What are you doing in Wichita Falls?” I said.
“Don’t worry your head over it.”
“There is nothing she can do to us.”
“This has gone on long enough. There is one person on earth who cannot be here and you have brought her into this house.”
“You are not going to change my mind,” I said.
“Every day I see you now you’re out on a dike. You think I don’t notice that for ten years you don’t bother to wash and now you’re wearing collars?”
I didn’t say anything.
“This ain’t a grass widow you get to tap free, son. This one will cost us the ranch.”
“You may leave now,” I said.
He didn’t move.
“Get out of my office.”
L
ATER
I
COME
across María in the library. I am pretending to look for a book, when she says, apropos of nothing: “How is your work going?”
“I’m not really working,” I say.
She smiles, then gets serious again.
“Consuela tells me things.”
“Whatever she is telling you, I won’t let it happen.”
“Peter.” She shrugs and looks out the window, past the trees. I look at the skin along her neck, her collarbones, the edge of one shoulder, I look at her arms, still thin. “ . . . I shouldn’t be here anyway. This is the last place I should be, in fact.”
“I’ll take care of my father.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Where else do you have?”
She shrugs and it is quiet and I watch her face changing. After a moment she decides something. “Do you have time to sit? If you are not really working?”
She is on her chair facing the window. I go to the couch.
“Don’t worry about my father,” I say.
She stands up and comes over and sits next to me. She touches my wrist.
“Sooner or later, I’ll have to leave. Days or weeks, it doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
She touches my cheek. We are so close and I wait for something to happen, but it doesn’t. When I open my eyes she is still looking at me. I lean forward, then stop myself; she is still looking at me, and I kiss her, just barely. Then I lean back. I am seeing spots.
She puts her fingers through my hair.
“You have good hair,” she says. “And yet your father is bald. And he is short, and you are tall.”
I can feel her breath.
“You will forget me,” she says.
“I won’t.”
I wait for something to happen. We’re leaning against each other. I work myself up and turn to kiss her again, but she only gives her cheek.
“I want to,” she says. But then she stands up and walks out of the room.
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.”
I
N 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.
T
HE 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.
T
HE JUDGE’S
T
HOROUGHBREDS
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
E
LLEN
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.”
Jeannie McCullough
S
he was sitting on the couch, watching Susan suck her blanket and Thomas, with his cowlick and overalls and fat little arms, his red bandanna, she wanted to eat him up. He was trying to make a tower from blocks. The sun was on him and she continued to watch and after the tower collapsed for the twentieth or fiftieth (or hundredth) time, she winked out. Later she came to. Thomas was arranging the blocks; Susan had fallen asleep. It seemed that the rest of her life, before she’d had children, had been a dream. Did she even have a mind at all? She was like an animal chewing its cud.
Now she was awake. She was bored but there was something else, a restlessness so intense that she could not physically sit still any longer, she got up and paced the room and then, glancing behind her quickly—the children still in place—she went out the glass door to the backyard and walked a lap around the high wooden fence. The grass was thick; it was humid under the trees. She could make a drink.