Streets Of Laredo

Later, Pea Eye felt bad about having made the remark. He didn't know why he had even made it, it just popped out. Though his hip pained him a good deal, Pea Eye could not help but feel good. His wife had found him, and they were together again. He wouldn't have to lose her, and he would see his children soon. Lorena was going to wire Clara to send them home when the time came for them all to go north.

The sullen doctor from Presidio had been persuaded to come and set Pea Eye's hip, but only because Lorena had gone to Presidio herself and refused to take no for an answer. She had waited sternly in the doctor's office until he saddled a horse and came back with her. He said Pea would be walking without a crutch in two months, just in time for planting. His shoulder was already almost healed, and the two toes Joey shot off he could do without. Mox Mox and Joey Garza were dead, but he himself had survived. He had also learned his lesson, and learned it well. He would never leave his family again.

"Why'd you have to say that about the crutch factory?" Lorena whispered to him that night. The remark had startled her. Pea Eye had never made a joke in his life--why that one at that time?

"He'll never forgive you for saying it, and I don't blame him," she went on. "You're just hurt, Pea. In two months you'll be as good as new. But the Captain is crippled for life.

He's crippled, for life!

"You better just shut up about crutch factories!" she whispered later, with unusual vehemence.

Pea Eye came to feel that his chance remark was the worst thing he had ever said in his life. His main hope was that the Captain would just forget it. But the Captain said so little to anyone that it was hard to know what he was remembering or forgetting. The Captain just lay there. He only fought when Pea Eye tried to help him relieve himself, struggling with his one weak hand. His struggles u

"You'll have to learn to do things for him, Pea," Lorena said. "He's helpless. He'll have to live with us for a while, I guess. I told Maria I'd take her children, and we've got them to think about, too. We're both going to have all we can do. You better make up your mind to start helping Captain Call. You have to help him now whether he likes it or not. You know the man. You worked for him most of your life. He don't like it when I help him. I don't know whether he just don't like me, or whether it's because I'm a woman, or because I was what I was, once ... I don't know. But we're going to have all we can do, both of us, and the Captain ought to be your responsibility." "Why, that little blind girl takes care of him pretty well herself," Pea said. Indeed, Teresa's attentiveness and the Captain's acceptance of it surprised him. He had never known the Captain to cotton to a child. He had never even come to visit their children, and he and Lorena had five.

Teresa brought the Captain his food and sat by him and fed him. She brought a rag and washed his face when he finished. If he wanted to turn on his side, he let Teresa help him.

Often, she whispered to him and the Captain responded, though in a voice so low that Pea Eye could not pick up the words. The little girl was quick as a lizard. She could be across the room and out the door in a flash, and Pea Eye never saw her bump into anything.

Maria and Joey were buried in the two graves Billy and Olin had dug. Many people came; not for Maria, but so they could say they had seen Joey Garza buried. Billy and Lorena went across the river and got the coffins, plain pine boxes.

They tried to find Mullins, the photographer, and return his donkey, but Mullins was drunk somewhere and could not be located. The collapse of his prospects proved too much for him. Billy Williams was a little abashed; it had all been the vaqueros' fault, not the photographer's. But they could not spend all day looking for a drunken photographer, so they took the donkey back to Mexico.

The old sisters and a few local women came to the burial, but very few men showed up. Gordo, the butcher, walked by sullenly and went home.

He was still angry with Maria for being dead and thus unavailable for marriage.

"There ought to be singing," Lorena said. She knew Pea Eye couldn't sing, and Billy and Olin were unknown quantities when it came to hymn singing. She remembered the songs in Laredo, during the burial of the deputy's young wife. She had learned from Pea that the deputy was dead now, too; it made her want to go live in a country where not so much blood was spilled. She remembered how the whore with the curly hair had poured her heart into the song for the young woman, as if she had known how the deputy's wife must have felt, to want to take her own life. Though not confident of her own voice, Lorena resolved to sing alone if necessary. She began "There's a Home Beyond the River"--after all, the river was right there in sight--and to her surprise, Olin Roy joined her. He had a fine baritone voice. He sang so well that a few of the gawkers from Presidio were moved to join in.

That night, dark feelings burdened Lorena.

She could not get Maria's horrible end to leave her mind. She tried to sleep, but could not. She lay beside Pea Eye on the pallet and began to shake. The feeling came over her that had made her want to die when Blue Duck took her and when Mox Mox prepared to burn her. Evil men or evil circumstances would come and prove stronger than all the good in her life. She had her husband back and would soon have her children with her, but in her fear, she could not help feeling that the reprieve was only temporary. Clara Allen herself had watched all three of her sons die.

Two of Maria's children had afflictions, and the one who had been whole and beautiful was evil. He had murdered many men and, in the end, had even murdered the woman who had carried him in her womb. Lorena couldn't control her fear, for it came from places too deep and too real, from what she had known and what she had seen. She and her family were safe, but only for a time. Her children were still young, and disease could take them. Her boys were still small; one of them could be a Joey. She didn't expect it, but Maria probably hadn't expected it either, when Joey had been the age of Georgie or Ben.

The fear made Lorena restless. She got up, then lay down again. The room was too small to walk in. She could hear Pea Eye's breathing, and the Captain's and Rafael's; the large boy snored in his sleep.

Billy Williams and Olin Roy were outside, drinking and smoking. In her restlessness, Lorena went out. She had never drunk much whiskey, but she wanted something that would dull her feeling--the feeling that there was no safety and that nothing could prevent things happening to her or her loved ones, things that were even worse than what had already happened. She knew she was lucky, for she was healthy, she wasn't dead, none of her children were sick, and her husband's wounds would heal.