Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

July knew the statement was absurd. Roscoe was only a deputy because he was lazy. But if there was one thing he didn’t want to get into, it was an argument over whether Roscoe was lazy, so he gave him a wave and walked on off.

WHEN JULY GOT HOME it was nearly dusk. Home was just a cabin on the edge of town. As he passed the horse pen he saw that little Joe had roped the milk-pen calf again—it was easy to do, for the calf seldom moved.

“You’ve got that calf broke,” July said. “You could probably saddle him and ride him if you wanted to.” “I milked,” Joe said. He got the pail, and the two walked to the cabin together. It was a fairly good cabin, although it didn’t yet have a wood floor—just well-packed dirt. July felt bad about bringing his bride to a cabin without a wood floor, but being sheriff didn’t pay much and it was the best he could do.

It was a high cabin with a little sleeping loft in it. July had initially supposed that was where they would put the boy, but, in fact, Elmira had put them in the sleeping loft and assigned the boy a pallet on the floor.

When they got there she had already cooked the supper—just bacon and cornbread—and was sitting up in the loft with her feet dangling. She liked to sit and let her feet dangle down into the cabin. Elmira liked being alone and spent most of her time in the loft, occasionally doing a little sewing.

“Don’t you slosh that milk,” she said, when Joe came in with the pail.

“Ain’t much to slosh,” Joe said.

It was true—the milk cow was playing out. Joe put his rope over by his pallet. It was his most prized possession. He had found it in the street one morning, after some cowboys had passed through. He didn’t dare use it for several days, assuming the cowboy who had lost it would come back and look for it. But none did, so gradually he began to practice on the milk-pen calf. If he had had a horse, he would have thought seriously of leaving and trying to get on with a cow outfit, but they only had two horses and July needed both of those.

“The food’s on,” Elmira said, but she made no move to come down from the loft and eat it with them.

She seldom did eat with them. It bothered July a good deal, though he made no complaint. Since their little table was almost under the loft he could look up and see Elmira’s bare legs as he ate. It didn’t seem normal to him. His mother had died when he was six, yet he could remember that she always ate with the family; she would never have sat with her legs dangling practically over her husband’s head. He had been at supper at many cabins in his life, but in none of them had the wife sat in the loft while the meal was eaten. It was a thing out of the ordinary, and July didn’t like for things to be out of the ordinary in his life. It seemed to him it was better to do as other people did—if society at large did things a certain way it had to be for a good reason, and he looked upon common practices as rules that should be obeyed. After all, his job was to see that common practices were honored—that citizens weren’t shot, or banks robbed.

He had arrested plenty of people who misbehaved, yet he could not bring himself to say a word to his wife about her own unusual behavior.

Joe didn’t share July’s discomfort with the fact that his mother seldom came to the table. When she did come it was usually to scold him, and he got scolded enough as it was—besides, he liked eating with July, or doing anything else with July. So far as he was concerned, marrying July was the best thing his mother had ever done. She scolded July as freely as she scolded him, which didn’t seem right to Joe. But then July accepted it and never scolded back, so perhaps that was the way of the world: women scolded, and men kept quiet and stayed out of the way as much as possible.

“Want some buttermilk?” July asked, going to the crock.

“No, sir,” Joe said. He hated buttermilk, but July loved it so that he always asked anyway.

“You ask him that every night,” Elmira said from the edge of the loft. It irritated her that July came home and did exactly the same things day after day.

“Stop asking him,” she said sharply. “Let him get his own buttermilk if he wants any. It’s been four months now and he ain’t drunk a drop—looks like you’d let it go.” She spoke with a heat that surprised July. Elmira could get angry about almost anything, it seemed. Why would it matter if he invited the boy to have a drink of buttermilk? All he had to do was say no, which he had.

“Well, it’s good,” he said quietly.

Joe almost wished he had taken a glass, since it would have kept July out of trouble. But it was too late.

After that one remark the meal went smoothly, mainly because no one said another word. Joe and July ate their cornbread and bacon, and Elmira hung her feet in the air.

“You take that medicine,” she said to July, as soon as he had finished. “If you don’t, I guess you’ll be yellow the rest of your life.” “He ain’t as yellow as he was,” Joe said, feeling that it was incumbent on him to take up for July a little bit, since July would never take up for himself. He had no real fear of his mother—she whipped him plenty, but her anger never lasted long, and if she was really mad he could always outrun her.“He’s too yellow for me,” Elmira said. “If I’d wanted a yellow husband I’d have married a Chinaman.” “What’s a Chinaman?” Joe asked.

“Go get a bucket of water,” Elmira said.

July sat at the table, feeling a little sad, while the boy drew a bucket of water. At least they had a well—the river was nearly a mile away, which would have been a long carry.

Joe brought the bucket in and went back outside. It was stuffy in the small cabin. There were a lot of fireflies out. For amusement he caught a few and let them flicker in his hand.

“Want a bath?” July asked his wife. “I’ll fetch some more water if you do.” Elmira didn’t answer because she didn’t really hear him. It was peculiar, but July almost never said anything that she did hear anymore. It seemed to her that the last thing she heard were their marriage vows. After that, though she heard his voice, she didn’t really hear his words. Certainly he was nothing like Dee Boot when it came to conversation. Dee could talk all week and never say the same thing twice, whereas it seemed to her July had never said anything different since they’d married.

That in itself didn’t bother her, though. If there was one thing she didn’t need to do, it was to talk to a man.