“I ain’t a person to have stood up for either one of them. I don’t like to see a man worrying about whether his hat is on to front or back. And taken to traveling around on foot, tucking at his shirt and leaning down to loose his shoes. But as of now I cut them off, the two of them.
“Maybe a woman ain’t fit to make something of them in the first place. Maybe I done wrong. And mine is even worse than most. Wherever them worms come from, that’s part the trouble.
“If you can be like me, and I ain’t ready to admit that, your trouble might not be more than mine. But a bad dog just gets worse. I ain’t sure what you’ll do to him; I won’t thank you for it.”
“Hattie,” Ma dropped her arm, “you better draw breath.”
The begrimed driver shook the reins, wiped her face and looked at the old woman. “Mrs. Lampson, you shouldn’t question so. It ain’t right for you to hold out so harsh. This girl’s pure as snow.” She drove again.
“Hattie just ain’t feeling well,” said Ma. “We got to overlook it. She come along for the sake of Mulge and me. That’s enough. And she’s going to stand right up there in front of all them people whether she’s sick or not. So we got to make allowance. She’ll be nicer when it’s done. Won’t you, Hattie?”
For the last time his mother spoke and stopped mumbling. “I don’t know anything about snow. I ain’t ever seen none.”
They rode without wagon headed sails. Lava and a few skull halves cracked beneath the wheels. Towards dusk a wind from the surface of the sun swept their path and blew against them live, lightly running bunches of gray wire and weed which sang against the sides of the wagons, across the burning bush, caught in the spokes and harness, stuck like burrs in the horses’ manes. The storm passed, hardly ruffling the discomfort of so many old and rigid women.
Clare was nothing but a spot on the plain where the sand thinly billowed, kicked up by someone crossing the street, stirred by the closing of a swinging door. The women sat straight and smoothed themselves when they saw the small constant geyser raised by the mere presence of a few men. The horses suddenly began to pull, as if they too, heads to the ground, could see the camp town — Mistletoe was less than that at the time — and the hitching rail near the bare wood church.
They were stopped by a shout from the Sheriff.
“You can’t bring all them people in here. No, sir, not without a license!”
Luke, not his brother, climbed down. He beat his hat against a sore unlimbered leg. He tucked in his shirt, loosening the muscles of his arms and back, drawing up his chest, and walked the length of the wagon train to the Sheriff.
“Howdy.” The man in khaki pants, knee high boots and Stetson, never left the barroom porch.
“I don’t see how you can keep us out,” said Luke.
The Sheriff leaned back against the post and again put the knife blade to his fingernails.
“All’s I got to do is call my boys. Of course, if you scatter, it’ll take us a little longer to round you up. But I wouldn’t.” The Sheriff brushed the parings from his vest, leaned forward and pushed the blade down a patent leather boot top to scratch his calf. The uncut nails on his red hands were longer than the manicured.
“But this here is a wedding!”
“Don’t matter. I don’t care if the whole pack aims to rut. You the man?”
“No, sir. I ain’t the one. That’s sure.”
The Sheriff raised his head and slowly scanned the wagons, looked at the quiet and waiting eyes of the women who stared back. In a low voice he muttered to the boy who stepped closer and listened with his back to the train. Then louder: “But that don’t make much difference. This town’s got a law. My men would be here in fifteen minutes, if I called.”
Luke heard the knocking of the horses. He smelled molasses and rubber gum, gun grease and a handful of browned leaves loose in a hot pants pocket. And suddenly he jumped onto the porch, two short steps loud on the swaydown boards.
“Well, now!” The Sheriff squinted.
Luke whispered in his ear. He spoke softly, using all his breath, against wax and smile, his own forehead near thick temples, his boy’s chin low to the bulging collar. He broke out as he felt the air fall from his throat, not caring that he was unable to see the other’s eyes. The pistol butt pressed upwards against his thin stomach. The head bent slightly forward, looking for a damp match dropped in the dust. Luke spoke into it with haste, perhaps asking how many cartridges the gun would hold. The ear was yellow since the squat man, in jest when drunk, bragged and fixed into it the moist end of a smoking cigarette. Luke shut his eyes.
“All right,” the Sheriff gently stopped him, “let them by.”
The Clare geyser churned and climbed suddenly higher as they rolled.
Ma married, by bonfire light and to the music of a borrowed and portable celesta, in a roped-off lot behind the church which, at the last moment, she refused to enter. At some time, after food was found, and away from the crowd of women, Luke spread out his neckerchief and said to the Sheriff, “This here pie’s for Maverick. She ain’t never seen a wedding.”
Throughout the night, Luke’s first in town, and until the middle of the morning when the trip home was attempted, Ma sat alone by the stretched, flat, feverish body of her husband’s mother. Ma’s chair faced the open window — it was a short jump from the strange and empty room to the ground — and at her feet lay the satchel, tightly closed, and the old woman who cried out, in the racking of her shoulders and occasional thump of her hand against the floor, for sleep. Ma sat straight and listened for the sound of returning footsteps. Now and then she leaned down to dry the darkening forehead or touch the plaited hair already wild.
“You did come. And I’ve married me a torment. I deserve to sit here on a folding chair, not even able to ease you off to sleep. I nagged you the whole day. And all’s I got is a bare finger which, had a ring been set on it — and you was right to keep it back — would have been yours, since he had none to give. It wasn’t mine to take. Nor was he. I guess it ain’t just me he’s shown he’s got no feeling for. And I can’t make it up to you. Since he’s left us both.”
rounding the corner of the Buckhouse — first four-sided, wooden shanty built among the tents, first building to turn a red false front and open hinged door on the dry grass and shapeless hills — Luke Lampson slowed his walk and stopped among the travelers still outside.
The Buckhouse had almost been a town itself and the prows and ribs of longboats, brought in by flatcar and having never reached the river, stuck up on either side in place of rock, horn, plant or doorstep in the sand. The tide had passed, leaving a small anchor and a few links of chain in the Buckhouse acreage which was marked at the farthest point by an old keg in a drift, blown over with weeds. Railroad tracks had come this way and gone. Now the slashed screens and narrow door, the green booths and back room out of town limits, faced on the highway and remained in darkness despite the headlights flashing up and past. But the frame house shook with the rumble of tires.
“What are you fellows doing here?” Luke Lampson untied his tobacco bag and squinted into the changing colored lights that flickered outdoors from above the bar.
“Leaning, Luke.”
“Just leaning.”
“Watching the people driving by.”
They squatted in the grass by the red wall or stood, shoulders hunched against the planking, staring off at the night sky or up and down the black road. Their carrying sticks lay across their knees, ends fastened to personal belongings bundled like cabbage heads at each man’s side. Or the sticks were propped in a row at the wall, like racked rifles, and at each man’s toe there rested a woven football filled with undershirts, shoelaces and packages of glazed saltines. The red neckerchiefs, freshly tied, were new. Their coveralls were heavily dusted from the land they had crossed and they talked together, rustling newspapers in the darkness, of the last automobile they had seen.