Boone's Lick

"What's wrong with him--the oaf!" Neva said.

"Oh, nothing--he's probably just been drinking whiskey with his Aunt Rosie," Ma said.

Then she stood up and ruffled my hair a little, like she had done when I was younger. For some reason I felt like crying, but Ma seemed to think it was all fu

I was up vomiting most of the night.

There was no sign of Uncle Seth.

14 THREE days after I got drunk that f _ first time Uncle Seth showed up at the J. cabin again. He walked in with a lordly air--it was his usual air--but he looked as if he'd spent his time in a pigsty. His clothes were filthy and one of his ears was red.

If Ma was put out by his absence she didn't show it, which didn't mean she was prepared to accept his appearance. G.T. had managed to get in a fight somewhere, that afternoon. He looked as bunged up as Uncle Seth.

The sight of them set Granpa Crackenthorpe cackling.

"Here's two fellows who got themselves whipped," he said.

"You shut up or I'll stab you in the leg again," G.T. said.

Granpa started looking for his cap-and-ball pistol, but before he found it Ma gave the two of them some soap and told them to go to the creek and get clean. By the time they came back, considerably cleaner, Granpa had 46

found his pistol, but Ma took it away from him and didn't give it back until he had cooled down considerably.

"I may have to put you on the street yet," she informed Granpa--it was a threat that took the fight out of Granpa real quick.

"She'd let an old man starve," he said, to the cabin at large, but no one paid him the slightest mind.

For the last three days Ma had been stuffing things in sacks and boxes--

potatoes, onions, clothes, pots, tools--anything that she thought might be useful on a trip across the prairies. No sooner would one of us get through with one chore than she would drag up another sack and tell us to put it in the wagon.

At first I didn't really believe we were going to look for Pa. It just seemed like one of the notions Ma sometimes got in her head. Once she had a notion that we ought to raise turkeys, but the coyotes and foxes and bobcats soon got all the turkeys.

Besides, why would we need to drag a wagon off across the plains to look for Pa, when he always showed up in Boone's Lick of his own accord once every year or two? He'd come and stay two or three days and then go.

Usually, a month or so after one of Pa's visits, Ma's belly would begin to swell, and eventually there'd be another baby.

That had always seemed to be Pa and Ma's way--of course, when Pa wasn't around, Uncle

Seth looked after us pretty well. Why go bother Pa if he didn't want to be bothered?

G.T. and I thought Uncle Seth would finally talk her out of the move, but Neva didn't agree.

"You oafs, we're going next week," Neva claimed. She had been calling us oafs for the past few weeks--once Neva found a word she liked she tended to work it hard, until she found a new word she liked better.

It was begi

The cabin looked so bare, from all the stuff we'd moved out, that the sight of it seemed to help Uncle Seth recover his sense of humor.

"We're down to the dirt floors, here," he said to Ma. "There's plenty of places outdoors that look more comfortable than this."

"We won't have to be uncomfortable long," Ma informed him. "Come Monday morning early I'd like to be on the move."

"Good Lord, that's just two days, Mary Margaret," Uncle Seth said. "I'll be hard pressed to get my affairs settled up in just two days."

Ma didn't seem concerned.

"What you can't settle you'll just have to leave," she told him.

47

"Mary Margaret, we've lived here for sixteen years," he reminded her.

"That's a long time."

"It is, but it'll be over in two days," Ma said. "And the only people I'll miss are those in the graveyard: my mother and my sister and my boys."

When Ma mentioned the graveyard even Uncle Seth knew it was no time for jokes.

"I trust you've found us a boat," Ma said. "I would like to make some of this trip by boat--I fear it would be too much wear and tear on the wagons to do it all overland."

"Not to mention the wear and tear on the mules and the people," Uncle Seth said.

Just then, through the door, we heard the click of buggy wheels, coming up the trail. Ma's first thought was of Uncle Seth.

"Are you in trouble, Seth?" she asked. "Did you kill somebody in your brawl?"

Neva, who was curious about everything, had already run out the door.

"It's Aunt Rosie!" she yelled.

Ma was closest to the door. "She's hurt--go see to her, Seth," Ma said.

There was such alarm in her voice that we all ran outside. Aunt Rosie was stretched across the seat of the buggy in a bloody dress. She was so beat up I hardly recognized her--both eyes were swollen shut. The blood was from a split lip. The old buggy man who met the trains and riverboats was driving. When Uncle Seth tried to ease Aunt Rosie out of the buggy she gave a sharp cry.

"Ribs," she said.

"Shay, go to the creek and get a bucket of water," Ma said.

"I'll kill whoever done this," Uncle Seth said.

"No you won't--the sheriff done it," Rosie said. "Joe Tate. He's not like Sheriff Baldy."

"Hurry, Shay--mind me," Ma said. "We need the water."

By the time I got back with the bucket of water Ma had made Aunt Rosie a comfortable pallet by the fireplace. She soon had water heated and it wasn't long before she had cleaned the blood off her sister.

"I can't do much about the ribs," Ma said.

"I'll go fetch the doctor, then," Uncle Seth said.

He was standing over Rosie with a dark look on his face.

"Don't let him go, Mary," Rosie said at once.

48

"Send Sherman."

"I suppose I'm free to go to town if I want to," Uncle Seth said, but both women shook their heads. Even Neva shook her head, though I don't know what Neva thought she knew about it.

"No you ain't--not when you're this mad," Ma said.

They stared at one another, over Aunt Rosie: Ma and Uncle Seth. I could see he was strongly inclined to go out the door. I didn't know why a sheriff would want to beat up Aunt Rosie, but I agreed with Uncle Seth that he deserved to be killed for it.

"Seth, you just calm down," Rosie said--her voice wasn't very strong. It reminded me of Sheriff Baldy's voice, just before he fainted.

"Calm down, with you half dead?" Uncle Seth said. "I guess I won't--not until Joe Tate's answered for this deed."

"That new preacher stirred him up--it's happened before," Aunt Rosie said. "New preachers always think they have to start preaching against whores."

"I suppose it helps them at the collection plate," Ma said.

"Preachers . . . they should shut their damn traps!" Uncle Seth said.

"But a preacher couldn't stir up a sheriff to do such as this unless the sheriff was mean to begin with. Joe Tate's just a damn bully."

"Listen to me, Seth," Ma said. "We're leaving this place in two days. It may be that we'll never be back. We have a long trip to make and we'll need your help. I can't allow you to march off and shoot the sheriff, or pistol-whip him, or whatever you have in mind."