Lonesome Dove 孤鸽镇

“Hell, you’re tall,” he said one night. “You ought to marry her yourself. The both of you can read.” He knew Mary could read because he had been in church once or twice when the preacher had asked her to read the Psalms. She had a kind of low, scratchy voice, unusual in a woman; once or twice, listening to it made Pea feel funny, as if someone was tickling the little hairs at the back of his neck.

Gus vehemently denied that he would be a suitable mate for Mary Cole. “Why, no, Pea, it wouldn’t do,” he said. “I’ve done been wrung through the wringer of marriage twice. What a widow wants is someone fresh. It’s what all women want, widows or not. If a man’s got experience it’s bound to be that he got it with another woman, and that don’t never sit well. A forthright woman like Mary probably considers that she can give you all the experience you’re ever likely to need.” To Pea it was all just a troublesome puzzle. He could not remember how the subject had come up in the first place, since he had never said a word about wanting to marry. Whatever else it meant, it meant leaving the Captain, and Pea didn’t plan to do that. Of course, Mary didn’t live very far away, but the Captain always liked to have his men handy in case something came up sudden. There was no knowing what the Captain would think if he were to try and marry. One day he pointed out to Gus that he was far from being the only available man in Lonesome Dove. Xavier Wanz was available, not to mention Lippy. A number of the traveling men who passed through were surely unmarried. But when he raised the point, Gus just ignored him.

Some nights, laying on the porch, he felt a fool for even thinking about such things, and yet think he did. He had lived with men his whole life, rangering and working; during his whole adult life he couldn’t recollect spending ten minutes alone with a woman. He was better acquainted with Gus’s pigs than he was with Mary Cole, and more comfortable with them too. The sensible thing would be to ignore Gus and Deets and think about things that had some bearing on his day’s work, like how to keep his old boot from rubbing a corn on his left big toe. An Army mule had tromped the toe ten years before, and since then it had stuck out slightly in the wrong direction, just enough to make his boot rub a corn. The only solution to the problem was to cut holes in his boot, which worked fine in dry weather but had its disadvantages when it was wet and cold. Gus had offered to rebreak the toe and set it properly, but Pea didn’t hate the corn that bad. It did seem to him that it was only common sense that a sore toe made more difference in his life than a woman he had barely spoken to; yet his mind didn’t see it that way. There were nights when he lay on the porch too sleepy to shave his corn, or even to worry about the problem, when the widow Cole would pop to the surface of his consciousness like a turtle on the surface of a pond. At such times he would pretend to be asleep, for Gus was so sly he could practically read minds, and would surely tease him if he figured out that he was thinking about Mary and her scratchy voice.

Even more persistent than the thought of her reading the Psalms was another memory. One day he had been passing her house just as a little thunderstorm swept through the town, scaring the dogs and cats and rolling tumbleweeds down the middle of the street. Mary had hung a washing and was out in her backyard trying to get it in before the rain struck, but the thunderstorm proved too quick for her. Big drops of rain began to splatter in the dust, and the wind got higher, causing the sheets on Mary’s clothesline to flap so hard they popped like guns. Pea had been raised to be helpful, and since it was obvious that Mary was going to have a hard time with the sheets, he started over to offer his assistance.

But the storm had a start on both of them, and before he even got there the rain began to pour down, turning the white dust brown. Most women would have seen at that point that the wash was a lost cause and run for the house, but Mary wasn’t running. Her skirt was already so wet it was plastered to her legs, but she was still struggling with one of the flapping sheets. In the struggle, two or three small garments that she had already gathered up blew out of her hand and off across the yard, which had begun to look like a shallow lake. Pea hurried to retrieve the garments and then helped Mary get the wet sheet off the line—she was evidently just doing it out of pure stubbornness, since the sun was shining brightly to the west of the storm and would obviously be available to dry the sheet again in a few minutes.

It was Pea’s one close exposure to an aspect of womankind that Gus was always talking about—their penchant for flyingdirectly in the face of reason. Mary was as wet on the top as on the bottom, and the flapping sheet had knocked one of the combs out of her hair, causing it to come loose. The wash was as wet as it had been before she hung it up in the first place, and yet she wasn’t quitting. She was taking clothes off the line that would just have to be hung back on in fifteen minutes, and Pea was helping her do it as if it all made some sense. While he was steadying the clothesline he happened to notice something that gave him almost as hard a jolt as the bolt of lightning that killed Josh Cole: the clothes he had rescued were undergarments—white bloomers of the sort that it was obvious Mary was wearing beneath the skirt that was so wet against her legs. Pea was so shocked that he almost dropped the underpants back in the mud. She was bound to think it bold that he would pick up her undergarments like that—yet she was determined to have the sheets off the line and all he could do was stand there numb with embarrassment. It was a blessing that rain soon began to pour off his hat brim in streams right in front of his face, making a little waterfall for him to hide behind until the ordeal ended. With the water running off his hat he only caught blurred glimpses of what was going on—he could not judge to what extent Mary had been shocked by his helpful but thoughtless act.

To his surprise, nothing terrible happened. When she finally had the sheet under control, Mary took the bloomers from him as casually as if they were handkerchiefs or table napkins or something. To his vast surprise, she seemed to be rather amused at the sight of him standing there with a stream of water pouring off his hat and falling just in front of his nose.

“Pea, it’s a good thing you know how to keep your mouth shut,” she said. “If you opened it right now you’d probably drown. Many thanks for your help.” She was the kind of forthright woman who called men by their first names, and she was known to salt her speech rather freely with criticism.

“We’ve the Lord to thank for this bath,” she said. “I personally didn’t need it, but I’m bound to say it might work an improvement where you’re concerned. You ain’t as bad-looking as I thought, now that you’re nearly clean.” By the time she got to her back porch the rain was slackening and the sun was already striking little rainbows through the sparkle of drops that still fell. Pea had walked on home, the water dripping more slowly from his hat. He never mentioned the incident to anyone, knowing it would mean unmerciful teasing if it ever got out. But he remembered it. When he lay on the porch half drunk and it floated up in his mind, things got mixed into the memory that he hadn’t even known he was noticing, such as the smell of Mary’s wet flesh. He hadn’t meant to smell her, and hadn’t made any effort to, and yet the very night after it happened the first thing he remembered was that Mary had smelled different from any other wet thing he had ever smelled. He could not find a word for what was different about Mary’s smell—maybe it was just that, being a woman, she smelled cleaner than most of the wet creatures he came in contact with. It had been more than a year since the rainstorm, and yet Mary’s smell was still part of the memory of it. He also remembered how she seemed to bulge out of her corset at the top and the bottom both.

It was not every night that he remembered Mary, though. Much of the time he found himself wondering about the generalities of marriage. The principal aspect he worried over most was that marriage required men and women to live together. He had tried many times to envision how it would be to be alone at night under the same roof with a woman—or to have one there at breakfast and supper. What kind of talk would a woman expect? And what kind of behavior. It stumped him: he couldn’t even make a guess. Once in a while it occurred to him that he could tell Mary he would like to marry her but didn’t consider himself worthy to live under the same roof with her. If he put it right she might take a liberal attitude and allow him to continue to live down the street with the boys, that being what he was used to. He would plan, of course, to make himself available for chores when she required him—otherwise life could go on in its accustomed way.

He was even tempted to sound out Gus on the plan—Gus knew more about marriage than anyone else—but every time he planned to bring it up he either got sleepy first or decided at the last second he had better keep quiet. If the plan was ridiculous in the eyes of an expert, then Pea wouldn’t know what to think, and besides, Gus would never let up teasing.

They were all scattered around the table, finishing one of Bol’s greasy breakfasts, when they heard the sound of horses in the yard. The next minute Augustus trotted up and dismounted, with the two Irishmen just a few yards behind him.

Instead of being bareback the Irishmen were riding big silver-studded Mexican saddles and driving eight or ten skinny horses before them. When they reached the porch they just sat on their horses, looking unhappy.

Dish Boggett had not really believed there were any Irishmen down in Mexico, and when he stepped out on the back porch and saw them he burst right out laughing.

Newt felt a little sorry for the two of them, but he had to admit they were a comical sight. The Mexican saddles were all clearly meant for men with longer legs. Their feet did not come anywhere near the stirrups. Even so, the Irishmen seemed disinclined to dismount.

Augustus jerked the saddle off his tired horse and turned him loose to graze.

“Get down, boys,” he said to the Irishmen. “You’re safe now, as long as you don’t eat the cooking. This is what we callhome.” Allen O’Brien had both hands around the big Mexican saddle horn. He had been holding it so tightly for the last two hours that he was not sure he could turn it loose. He looked down with apprehension.

“I’d not realized how much taller a horse is than a mule,” he said. “It seems a long ways down.” Dish regarded the remark as the most comical he had ever heard. It had never occurred to him that there could be such a thing as a grown man who didn’t know how to dismount from a horse. The sight of the two Irishmen stuck with their short legs dangling down the sides of the horses struck him as so funny that he doubled over with laughter.

“I guess we’ll have to build ’em a ladder, by God,” he said, when he could catch his breath.

Augustus too was mildly amused by the Irishmen’s ignorance. “Why, boys, you just have to flop over and drop,” he said.

Allen O’Brien accomplished the dismounting with no real trouble, but Sean was reluctant to drop once he flopped over.

He hung from the saddle horn for several seconds, which puzzled the horse, so that it began to try and buck a little. It was too thin and too tired to do much, but Sean did get jerked around a little, a sight so funny that even Call laughed. Allen O’Brien, once safe on the ground, immediately joined in the laughter out of relief. Sean finally dropped and stood glaring at his brother.

“Well, I don’t see Jake—that figures,” Augustus said, taking himself a big dipper of water and squishing a few mouthfuls around and spitting them out, to clear the dust from his throat. He then offered the dipper to Allen O’Brien, who imitated the squishing and spitting, thinking it must be a custom of the new country he found himself in.

“You took your time, I see,” Call said. “I was about to start back with a burial party.” “Shucks,” Augustus said. “Bringing these boys in was such a light task that I went over to Sabinas and stopped off at the whorehouse.” “That explains the saddles,” Call said.

“Yes, and the horses too,” Augustus said. “All the bandits was dead drunk by the time we got there. These Irish boys can’t maintain much of a pace riding bareback so we helped ourselves to a few saddles and the best of the nags.” “Them horses wouldn’t make good soap,” Dish said, looking at the horses Augustus had brought back.