Lonesome Dove - Streets Of Laredo Part 82

"Why, Colonel ... they had tickets," the stationmaster told him. "People with tickets can get on the train ... it's just a matter of having tickets." "d.a.m.n the tickets, and G.o.dd.a.m.n you, you're fired, get off my railroad!" Colonel Terry ordered.

In San Antonio, Lorena stopped for a day to take Teresa to an eye doctor. The stationmaster in Laredo had noticed that the little girl was blind, and told Lorena the name of a doctor in San Antonio who could help people with poor vision. His wife's sister was shortsighted, and had gone to him and got some fine spectacles. Before that, she had been p.r.o.ne to mixing up the sugar and the salt. Her husband, his brother-in-law, had been about to leave her for it.

The eye doctor was a very old man. His name was Lee.

"No kin to the General," he told Lorena.

He boiled his instruments for a long time, before examining Teresa.

"People think I'm kin to the General, but I'm no kin to the General," he said again, while waiting for the instruments to cool.

Teresa held her rooster--the old doctor had allowed it.

"Why, sure, what's the harm in a rooster, unless he pecks," he said.

When he was through, Dr. Lee took Lorena aside and told her that Teresa was incurably blind. Lorena went back to the train with a heavy heart. But Teresa had her rooster, and she seemed happy.

North of Fort Worth, there was a delay. An old man had been crossing the tracks with a wagonful of pigs. The old man was deaf, and he didn't hear the train coming. The wreck killed the old man, and scattered pigs everywhere. One of the wagon wheels jammed under the locomotive, along with a dead sow; it took a long time to clear it. In the railroad station in San Antonio, Lorena had used a little of Mr. Goodnight's money to buy a book by Mr. Hardy. She read it while the train was stopped.

"It's about a girl called Tess," she told Pea Eye, when he inquired.

"I hope she wasn't blind, like our Tessie," Pea Eye replied.

Call looked out the window at the gra.s.slands, as the plains opened around them. Teresa whispered to him, trying to get him to talk; but he could not bring himself to speak, at least not often. There must have been a lot of rain that winter, for the cover was abundant. It would be a good year for the cattle herds.

The Captain could not imagine what he was going to do, in the years ahead. He would have to live, but without himself. He felt he had left himself far away, back down the weeks, in the spot west of Fort Stockton where he had been wounded. He had saddled up, as he would have on any morning. He had ridden off to check two horses, as he would have on any morning, as he had ridden on thousands of mornings throughout his life. He had been himself, a little stiff maybe, his finger joints swollen; but himself. He scarcely heard the gunshots, or felt the first bullet. That bullet and the others hadn't killed him, but they had removed him. Now there was a crack, a kind of canyon, between the Woodrow Call sitting with Teresa on the train and the Woodrow Call who had made the campfire that morning and saddled his horse. The crack was permanent, the canyon deep. He could not get across it, back to himself. His last moments as himself had been spent casually--making a campfire, drinking coffee, saddling a horse.

Then the wounds split him off from that self, that Call--he could remember the person he had been, but he could not become that person again. He could never be that Call again. Even if he had kept his arm and his leg, he knew it would be much the same. Of course, having the arm and the leg would have been a great convenience, for he could earn a living if he had them. He could be far less of a burden. But even if he had kept the arm and leg, he could not have returned to being the Call who had made the campfire and saddled the horse. The first bullet had removed him from that person. That person--that Call--was back down the weeks, on the other side of the canyon of time. There was no rejoining him, and there never would be.

The train reached the little station at Quanah after midnight. Teresa slept. Rafael had been moaning; he was having bad dreams. Call could manage his crutches a little, but he was very stiff from the long ride on the hard bench. Pea Eye had to help him up.

Charles Goodnight stood on the platform.

Clara Allen stood there, too. When Lorena looked out the window and saw Clara, her heart leapt.

"Clara's here," she said, to Pea Eye.

"We'll get to see our children." "Oh my Lord!" Pea Eye exclaimed.

Lorena picked up Teresa and kept Rafael close to her side. She didn't want to scare him. He had the smaller of the goats in his arms.

"h.e.l.lo--we've got two more children now," Lorena said, as she eased Rafael down the steps.

"What a pretty child," Clara said, coming closer to look at Teresa in the light from the station window.

"You must have traveled hard--you got here quicker than us, and we was in Texas to begin with," Lorena said. She freed an arm and hugged Clara. To her eye Clara looked older, and too thin.

Even with Pea Eye's help, Captain Call had difficulty getting down the steps with his crutches. He was embarra.s.sed that he had to be met, and particularly by Clara Allen, who had never liked him. But she had traveled from Nebraska to bring Pea Eye and Lorena their children. That was doing them a considerable favor, he recognized.

"Pea, you've got to go back and get the other goat and Teresa's chickens," Lorena said.

"I don't know what Tessie would do if we left that rooster on the train." "I'll fetch the goat," Goodnight said.

He was glad to have something to help with. The sight of Woodrow Call was a shock to him, though he was no stranger to wounded men. It was not so much the missing limbs as the look on the man's face that bothered him. But it was shadowy, on the platform; perhaps in the daylight he wouldn't look so ruined.

"I'm not much of a hand with fowl," he said.

"h.e.l.lo, Woodrow." "Yes, h.e.l.lo, Captain," Clara said.

"I'll get the chickens, Charlie." "Why didn't he just die?" she asked Goodnight, when they were on the train.

Goodnight had already picked up the goat, but looked as if he didn't know quite what to do about the chickens.

"I was never much of a hand with fowl," he remarked, again.

"I told you I'd get the chickens," Clara said, annoyed that he had simply ignored her question about Call. Goodnight had happened to be in the station in Amarillo, when she and the children arrived from Omaha. Clara remembered Goodnight from her childhood, for he had known her father well. He had been in Nebraska once and had bought ten horses from her. She went over and said h.e.l.lo.

Since they were going to be on the same train, she thought he might be some help with the little ones, but that proved a false hope. Not only was Goodnight hard to make conversation with, he was as scared of the children as if they had been wildcats.

Clara picked the chickens up by their legs and carried them off the train. The hens and the rooster were outraged--Teresa had never carried them upside down. The hens began to squawk and the rooster to protest.

"What's wrong with my chickens? Don't carry them that way, give them to me," Teresa said. She had realized from the sound that the chickens were upside down.

It was only when Teresa reached for her chickens that Clara realized the little girl was blind.

The five children were asleep in a heap on the floor, in a corner of the station. Clarie had her arms around them all. At the sight of his daughter holding her brothers and her sister, Pea Eye broke down. In his time of danger he had almost given up hope of seeing his children again. Yet there they were, all alive, all sleeping, on the floor of a railroad station. His big daughter was looking after them. It was more than he deserved, more even than he had hoped for, and he began to cry.

Teresa's hens were still squawking, even though she had set them down. They were running around the station; one brown hen jumped up on the stationmaster's desk and scattered his papers.

"Here, scat--who are you?" he said. He was not used to such commotion at that hour. Usually no more than a cowboy or two got off the Fort Worth train.

"Oh, Pa," Clarie said, when she awoke and saw her father. Ben got awake and hugged his father, but waking up proved too much for Georgie and August. Both yawned heavily and went back to sleep. Laurie, the baby, opened her eyes and started to cry. She didn't know who the strange man was, hugging Clarie. Then her mother reached down and took her. There was an old man standing near who had only sticks for legs. Laurie looked at him curiously, as her mother hugged her.

Goodnight had arranged for a cowboy to bring a wagon. The cowboy arrived at sunup, driving the wagon and leading two horses. The boys were awake by then. They chased the hens and played with the goats. They took to Rafael right away but were a little shy with Teresa, who held her rooster in her arms.

"There must be a doctor somewhere who could help that girl see," Clara told Lorena.

Although she had just arrived in Texas, she was already beginning to dread the trip home, by herself. She had grown used to Lorena's children, and to having laughter and fusses in her house. There had been life in her house again; since her daughters left, it seemed to her, there had been no life in her house. It was hard for her, one aging woman, to bring life to a home. Yet how she missed it!

Goodnight mounted one of the horses; the cowboy mounted the other. Pea Eye took the reins of the team. It was still all he could do to keep from bawling, at the sight of his children and the familiar country.

"Many thanks for the loan of the wagon," he said, to Mr. Goodnight.

"You're welcome," Goodnight replied.

He had not quite mastered his shock at the change in Woodrow Call.

"I'll soon repay that loan," Lorena told him. She had not told Pea Eye she had borrowed money. She intended to discuss it with Mr.