“Hey, sweetie,” I said. “Ain’t you normal? I thought you was supposed to bleed all over the place.”
“Why, didn’t you know no better than that?” she said, turning around and grinning at me. She had a pair of Levis in her hand, but she hadn’t put them on. “You’re the funniest boy, Gid.” The morning light was coming in on her through the windows; she pulled on a shirt and never buttoned it, and her hair was down over her shoulders. I thought she was the prettiest thing I had ever seen.
“You didn’t have to worry,” she said, innocent as daylight. “You only bleed like that the first time.”
I was absolutely flabbergasted.
seven
It made me pretty down in the mouth, finding out that I wasn’t the first feller ever to spend a night with Molly. I couldn’t think straight for a while, I was so upset. But there wasn’t much I could say about it, because she got up just happy as a lark, and not the least bit down in the dumps about anything. She fed me some awful good biscuits for breakfast, too. But I never enjoyed my food. All I could think about was wanting to get married to her as soon as I could.
Of course Dad raked me over the coals when I finally got home. He seen me unhitching the buggy, and here he came.
“Well, at least you ain’t eloped with her,” he said, looking at the buggy to see how stratched up it was. “But I bet it wasn’t because you didn’t try. Your good buddy Johnny’s been down there digging postholes for three hours. Get on down there and help him.”
“He ain’t my good buddy,” I said. “I guess I can change clothes before I go, can’t I?”
“I’d just as soon you worked in them you got on,” Dad said. “If you dirty them up, you won’t be running around so much at night.” And I had been out two nights in a month, and one of them he never knew about.
Johnny, he was sweating his whiskey out. But I wasn’t in no mood to sympathize with him.
“Where you been?” he said. “Why wasn’t you’all at the dance? Hell, I waited for you till one o’clock.”
“We got lost and never made it. How’d you and your sweetheart Mabel get along?”
He leaned on his diggers a minute. “Why, she’d be a darling if she wasn’t such a bitch,” he said. “I had to run backward all night to keep her from proposing to me.”
He would have chattered all day if I had let him, but I grabbed my diggers and walked off a hundred yards or so and went to digging. I wasn’t in a talking mood.
Well, I thought about it and thought about it, and I couldn’t come to no decision. It had to be Johnny that done it, but he never acted the least bit guilty about it, and Molly never either, so I had no way of knowing. The only thing that made me doubt it was Johnny was him not bragging about it. He just naturally bragged a little if he had done anything to brag about. Anyhow, I didn’t think it was right for two fellers to have spent the night with a sweet girl like Molly and not either one of them have married her. The more I thought about it, the surer I was about that, and something had to be done about it. If Johnny had been there first, then he ought to have the first chance at marrying her, and if he didn’t want to, why I damn sure did. And the way I seen it, Molly could have her choice of me and him, but that was all the choice there was to it. She couldn’t go running around single much longer, that was for sure.
All the same, I couldn’t help being mad at myself, because I kept wanting to go right back over and spend another night. And I would have, too, if her damned old man had ever left agin; I snuck over several times to check, but he was always there. I hadn’t forgot about him giving her that black eye, either.
Finally me and Johnny had it out about her, when we were going to Fort Worth, of all places. About the middle of November, Dad decided to ship the rest of his calves, but he didn’t want to go along and fool with them, so he sent me and Johnny.
“I guess I’m a damn fool for sending two idiots when I could just send one,” he said. “But maybe if I send two, one will be sober enough to look after the cattle part of the time. I want you boys back here on Sunday, and I don’t want you to give them cattle away. If you see any yearling steers worth the money, you might buy me about a hundred of them and bring ’em home with you.”
Of course it was the biggest lark in the world to me and Johnny. We struck out early one morning, with a norther blowing cold as hell, and drove the cattle to Henrietta and put them on the railroad cars for Fort Worth about night that same day.
“Them cattle are safe,” Johnny said. “Let’s go wet our whistles. My damn throat’s full of dust.”
Mine was too, and we bought some whiskey and went to washing out the dust. About that time we went into a little honkytonk there by the railroad yards and run into the deputy sheriff that had arrested Johnny the last time he was in Henrietta. Only he wasn’t a deputy no more and was a good bit drunker than we was, and had two of his drinking buddies with him. Johnny asked me if I’d back him up, and I said sure, so he went over and called the feller a sonofabitch and the other feller called him one back and they went outside and had a fist fight in the street. Me and the other fellers went too, but we didn’t fight. The ex-deputy bloodied Johnny’s nose, but I think Johnny had a little the best of the fight.
“That’ll show you, you bastard,” Johnny said. “Next time just try and arrest me.”
“Sonofabitch,” the man said. “Want me to whip you good?”
That was funny, because they had already fought for fifteen minutes. Me and Johnny walked over to the pens and climbed around on the cars awhile, and the cattle looked all right to us, so we went to the caboose and went to sleep. Sometime during the night the train come and hooked onto the cars and off we went, I don’t know just when. The caboose was awful bouncy, and it woke me up about Decatur. Johnny was sitting up holding his jaw; I guess it had bounced against the floor. There wasn’t but one other passenger, a damn greasy oil-field hand, who looked like he’d got on the train about Burkburnett. He was asleep on the bench.
“Hell, let’s go outside,” Johnny said. “I can’t sleep in this rickety bastard. Let’s go out and look at the country awhile.”
“I’m ready,” I said.
We put on our jackets and walked out on the little porch of a thing at the tail-end of the caboose. It was a clear, starry night, but cold as hell. The norther was still blowing, and we was getting it right in our faces. We set down with our backs to the door of the caboose and watched the country go by in the dark.
“I sure like riding trains,” Johnny said. “Lots faster than going some place ahorseback.”
I watched the rails come out from under the car, and they didn’t seem to be coming so fast. But they came awful steady; I kept halfway looking for them to end, and they never did. We went through some little old town, I never have known the name of it, and all it had in it was grain elevators. It was the most grain elevators I knew of this side of Kansas. We could see the shapes of them in the moonlight. It was real exciting to be going someplace.
“This here’s where they make all the oatmeal,” Johnny said. “Boy, I’m glad I ain’t no farmer. There ain’t nothing that can compare with a cowboy’s life, if you ask me. You don’t have to worry about a damn thing.”
“It just depends,” I said. “What if you own the ranch you’re working on? Then you got to worry about making money and taking care of the cattle and all that kind of thing.”
“Then you ain’t a cowboy, you’re a rancher,” he said. “I never said I wanted to be a rancher. Damn, I wish I’d brought my sheepskin coat. I didn’t figure it would get this cold in November.”
“It’s because we’re moving so fast.” My ears were getting numb, but it was a lot nicer ride out on the end than in that bouncy caboose.
“What you ought to do,” he said, “is to forget all that ranching. And forget about marrying, too. Then one of these days we could go up on the plains and really have us a time. When the ranch gets to be yours, you can sell it and not have it worrying you all your lif
e.”
“That’s just like you,” I said. “You ain’t got no more responsibility than a monkey. That ain’t no way to amount to nothing.”
“Responsibility ain’t no valuable thing to have, necessarily,” he said. “Listen at you. It depends on what you want to amount to. I want to amount to a good cowboy.”
“Talking about marrying,” I said, “that reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. Something pretty serious. I guess I got to admit you got first claims on Molly, but what I want to know is, do you really intend to marry her or not? One of us has got to, that’s for sure, and if you ain’t going to, I am.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. Finally he laughed, but he was kind of uncertain about it.
“You needn’t snicker,” I said. “I found out all about it. I know you laid up with her. I done it too, of course, but you was the first, so she’s really your responsibility. Now one of us has got to do something.”
“I believe you’re serious,” he said. “And I know you’re crazy. What in the world are you talking about?”
“It’s simple as mud,” I said. “You sweet-talked Molly into letting you spend the night with her. Okay. Hell, I don’t blame you, I done it too. Anybody would want to. Only the first one has the most responsibility. It ain’t no way to do a good-hearted girl like Molly, and you know it. Now is it?”
“Why, you beat all I ever seen,” he said. “After being in that whorehouse and all that mess we went through in Kansas getting you cured, and you still sit there and talk like a damn preacher.”
“Now you better watch it, or you’ll get a real fight, Johnny,” I said. “I ain’t talking like no preacher. I’m just talking about doing what’s right about Molly.”
“I wasn’t meaning her,” he said. “I was talking about you. She’s as nice as they come, I wasn’t calling her no whore. But you ain’t no more of a lily-white boy than I am.”
“I know it,” I said. “I just want to get this settled. It’s been bothering me for two weeks.”
“What I’m trying to get you to understand, there ain’t nothing to settle. Molly ain’t done nothing to be ashamed of. We’ve always treated her nice and she likes both of us. You’re just ashamed of something that ain’t shameful.”
“Maybe so,” I said, “but I’m pretty crazy about her, and I imagine you are too. But one of us ought to take care of her, and it’ll be a shame if one of us don’t, that’s all I meant to say. You was first, so you get the first chance.”
“But that ain’t even right, Gid,” he said. “I wasn’t first, no such thing. I always figured you was first. You was, and you know it. So why try to put the blame on me. I wouldn’t do a thing like that to you.”
That confused me. “The hell you wasn’t first,” I said. “Molly told me herself—she wasn’t thinking what she was saying, I guess-that I wasn’t the first one. Why are you trying to get out of it if you ain’t ashamed?”
“Because I wasn’t first,” he said. “If you wasn’t, then somebody else was. Not you nor me. Hell, I never stayed with her a time till last summer. When did you start?”
“The night of that harvest dance,” I said. It flabbergasted us both. We never said a word for about fifteen miles, I guess. My ears like to froze off.
“Well, I guess we caught her,” he said, finally. “I swear. I always figured it had been you. I wonder who the hell it was.”
“It can’t be just anybody,” I said. “She’s too sweet a girl. Who have we overlooked?”
“Aw hell,” he said. “We ought to thought of it sooner. It must have been that damn Eddie.”
“Not that worthless bastard, I can’t believe that.” But I remembered one time she said he was the only one silly enough for her. I guess she meant it.
“He’s the very one,” Johnny said. “He ought to have the shit kicked out of him. What business does he have fiddling around with Molly anyway? That hound-running sonofabitch has probably got fleas plumb up to his middle.”
“Yeah, that shit-ass,” I said. “Evertime I see him he’s greasy to the elbows. What would she want to take up with somebody like that for?”
“Aw, Molly’s crazy,” he said. He didn’t sound too happy, and I wasn’t, either. Neither of us could stand that goddamn Eddie. “She don’t think like other girls,” he said. “Her trouble is, she’s too nice. She’s lived with that no-count bastard of a daddy so long she can’t tell worthless people from them that’s got something to them.”
“That’s about it. That old man’s the cause of it all.”
“I guess she figures she don’t have no chance of being a nice girl anyway, growing up around him. That’s probably why she took up with Eddie.”
“Maybe there’s somebody else,” I said. “I’d rather it be nearly anybody than him.”
But we couldn’t think of another soul.
“Anyhow,” Johnny said, “now you see that neither one of us has got to marry her. We don’t need to have no guilty conscience. If he done it first, he’s the one ought to marry her.”
That shocked me worse than anything he’d said the whole night. “My god,” I said. “You think I’d sit by and watch Molly marry a worthless sonofabitch like him. Why he ain’t got nothing but a few hound dogs and a pair of roughnecking boots. He’d just drag her to one oil patch after another all her life.”
“Serve her right, by god,” he said. “She oughtn’t to taken up with him in the first place.”
“I know,” I said. “But it don’t make no difference. I’ll just marry her anyway, even if I am third man. I ain’t going to let her marry Eddie.”
“Looky there,” he said. “Ain’t that a sight? I never knowed we was this close.”
I looked, and there were the lights of Fort Worth. You never saw so many lights in your life. It was hard to imagine living in a place that big, but it sure was exciting to see all the lights at once. The train blew its whistle.
“That’s cowtown,” Johnny said.
“It’s too early for anybody to be up,” I said. “I wonder what they need with so many lights.”
“I guess they just leave them lit so jackasses like us can tell when we’re coming to a real town.”
We stood up and looked, and pretty soon there were houses all around us and we went back in the caboose awhile, to warm up. The oil-fielder was still asleep. We decided he was drunk.
“I tell you what,” Johnny said. We took off his shoes real careful and hid them over in a corner and got his shoelaces and tied his ankles together with them. We left a little play in the laces, but we tied about a dozen real hard knots and then spit on them to make them slippery.
“It’ll take him a solid hour to get loose,” Johnny said.
“It serves him right. It’s what he gets for being an oil-fielder.” We thought that was a pretty funny trick.
Pretty soon the train slowed down and stopped at the stockyards, and then the fun stopped too, for a while. We didn’t know up from down about the stockyards, or what we were supposed to do or nothing, and we got out and stood around in the cold and the dark for about an hour, waiting to unload the cattle. There were a lot of stockyards fellers moving around with lanterns and punch-poles, and a lot of railroad men too, but they never said nothing to us and we didn’t bother them.
“Hell, maybe we ought to ask somebody,” I said finally. “What if the train goes on and takes our stock with it?”
“I don’t know,” Johnny said. “My damn hands are froze. I hate to bother any of these men, don’t you?”
I hated to too, so we stood awhile longer. Then the train blew its whistle, and that scared us enough that we found a Mexican and asked him. But he only knew Mexican and we only knew white man, so we finally had to ask one of the stockyards men.
“Goddamn, boys, you’all look about frozen,” he said. We told him our problem, and, by god, if they hadn’t already unloaded our cattle and taken them to a pen way off across the yards. We had been so cold we never noticed and
had got by the wrong railroad car, one full of cattle that was going on to the slaughterhouse.
“Well, I guess we can go get a hotel room, can’t we?” Johnny said.
“Not till we find them cattle,” I said. “What if somebody tried to mix them with another bunch? Dad would have a fit.”
So we struck off across the yards looking for them, and just had an awful time. We had to crawl over about a hundred fences, and we couldn’t see well enough to tell if any of the bunches of cattle were ours or not. There must have been a thousand bunches of cattle, each one in a different pen. Finally by mistake we got in a pen with a couple of damn boar hogs. We didn’t even see them and thought the pen was empty till we got about halfway across it and heard one grunt as he come for us.
“Goddamn,” Johnny said. “Run.” We took off and hadn’t taken two steps till another hog jumped up in front of us. He squealed and come at us too, but we jumped him before he got to his feet good and hit the fence and went up it.
“Shit,” Johnny said, “you can look for them cattle if you want to. I’m going to the hotel. I ain’t no hog fighter.”
The old boars were grunting and squealing around below us like they really wanted blood. I wasn’t a hog fighter either.
“Goddammit,” I said. “They oughtn’t to taken them cattle out of the cars without asking me. I’m the one responsible for them, ain’t I? Now I guess they’re lost.”
“Well, if they are, we just won’t go home,” Johnny said. “We can work around here for a few days and then catch a train up north. If them cattle are lost, I don’t never want to see Archer County agin.”
We finally found our way out of the yards and went through the big Exchange building. On the other side of it was the street. We walked down it and came to a lot of honkytonks and hotels; the honkytonks were closed, and the hotels didn’t look too lively, but we finally come to one called the Longhorn, and an old feller came out dripping chewing tobacco on the rug and gave us a room for fifty cents apiece. I was worried about the cattle. I figured if I had lost them, I better go farther away than the Panhandle. I better go at least to Canada.