Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove

She just had a dusty little room in a boardinghouse in St. Jo, and the boy a cubbyhole in the attic. Dee snuck in twice, in the dead of night, so as not to tarnish her reputation. He liked Joe, too, and had the notion that he ought to grow up to be something. It was the last time she saw Dee that they had worked out the smallpox story.

"I'm going north, Ellie-I'm tired of sweating," he said. "You go south and you'll be fine. If anybody asks say your husband died of smallpox-you can get to be a widow without even having been married. I might get the smallpox anyway, unless I'm lucky."

"I'd go north with you, Dee," she said quietly, not putting much weight on it. Dee didn't care to have much weight put on things.

But Dee just grinned and pulled at his little blond mustache.

"Nope," he said. "You got to go respectable. I bet you make a schoolmarm yet."

Then he had given her a sweet kiss, told her to look after his boy, and left her with ten dollars and the memory of their reckless years together in Abilene and Dodge. She had known he wouldn't take her north-Dee traveled alone. It was only when he settled in a town to gamble that he liked a woman. But he had offered to go shoot the buffalo hunter who had used her so hard. She had pretended she didn't know the man's name. Dee wasn't a hard man, certainly not as hard as the buffalo hunter. He would have been the one to end up dead.

As for July, it had been no trick to marry him. He was like some of the young cowboys who had never touched a woman or even spoken to one. In two days he was hers. She soon knew that he made no impression on her. His habits never varied. He did the same things in the same way every day. Nine days out of ten he even forgot to wipe the buttermilk off his upper lip. But he wasn't hard like the buffalo hunters. With him she was safe from that kind of treatment, at least.

When she heard Jake was in town she thought she might just run away with him, though she knew he was even less dependable than Dee. But once he shot Benny she had to give up that little dream, the only little dream she had.

Since then, life had been very boring. She spent most of her days sitting in the loft, letting her feet dangle, remembering the old days with Dee and Jake.

July was sitting in the dark, buttermilk on his lip, looking at her as patiently as if he were a calf. The very look of him, so patient, made her want to torment him any way she could.

July knew that for some reason he irritated Elmira-she reacted crossly to almost everything he said or suggested. Sometimes he wondered if all men only made their wives look hostile and sullen. If it wasn't the case, then he wondered what made the difference.

He had always taken pains to be as nice as possible, sharing all the chores with little Joe and sparing her inconveniences whenever he could. Yet it seemed the more polite he tried to be, the more he stumbled or said the wrong thing or generally upset her. At night it had gotten so he could hardly put a hand on her, she looked at him so coldly. She could lie a foot from him and make him feel that he was miles away. It all made him feel terrible, for he had come to love her more than anything.

"Wipe your lip, July," she said. "I wish you'd ever learn, on else stop drinking that buttermilk."

Embarrassed, he wiped it. When Elmira was annoyed she made him so nervous that he couldn't really remember whether he had eaten, or what.

"You ain't sick, are you?" he asked. There were fevers going around, and if she had one it would explain why she felt so testy.

"I ain't sick," she said.

Since he had started the business about Jake, he thought he might as well finish it. She was mad anyway.

"If I start after Spoon now, I expect I could be back in a month," he said.

Ellie just looked at him. It was all right with her if he was gone for a year. The only reason she objected to his going was that she knew Peach was behind it; if somebody was going to tell the man what to do, it ought to be her, not Peach.

"Take Joe with you," she said.

Such a thought had never occurred to July, though it had crossed his mind that he might take Roscoe.

"Why, you'll need him," July said. "You've got the chores."

Elmira shrugged. "I can milk that old cow," she said. "The chores ain't hard. We ain't raising cotton, you know. I want you to take Joe. He needs to see the world."

It was true the boy might be useful on a long trip. There would be someone to help him watch the prisoner, once there was a prisoner. But it meant leaving Ellie alone, which he didn't like.

As if reading his mind, she sat down at the table and looked at him.

"I been alone before, July," she said. "It ain't gonna hurt me. Roscoe can help if I need something I can't carry."

That was true, of course-not that Roscoe would be particularly obliging about it. Roscoe claimed to have a bad back and would complain for days if forced to do anything resembling manual labor.

"There could be a fight," July said, remembering that Jake Spoon was said to have difficult friends. "I don't expect it, but you never know with a gambler."

"I don't reckon they'd shoot a boy," Elmira said. "You take Joe. He's got to grow up sometime."

Then, to escape the stuffy cabin, she went outside and sat on a stump for a while. The night was thick with fireflies. In a little while she heard July come out. He didn't say anything. He just sat.

Despite his politeness and constant kindness, Elmira felt a bitterness toward him. The thing he didn't know was that she was with child. He wouldn't know it, either, if she could help it. She had just married out of fright-she didn't want him or the child either. And yet she was scared to try and stop the child-in Abilene she had known a girl who bled to death from trying to stop a baby. She had died on the stairs outside Elmira's room on a bitter cold night; blood had run all the way down the stairs and frozen in the night into red ice. The girl, whose name was Jenny, had stuck to the stairs. They had had to heat water in order to get her loose.

The sight had been enough to discourage her from trying to stop a baby. Yet the thought that she had one made her bitter. She didn't want to go through it all again, and she didn't want to live with July Johnson. It was just that the buffalo hunter had been so rough; it had scared her into thinking she had to find a different life.

Life in Font Smith was different, too-so dull that she found little reason to raise herself from her quilts, most days. The women of the town, though they had no reason to suspect her, suspected her anyway and let her alone. Often she was tempted just to walk into a saloon where there was a girl or two she could might have talked to, but instead she had given way to apathy, spending whole days sitting on the edge of her sleeping loft, doing nothing.

Watching the fireflies sparkle in the woods behind the cabin, Elmira waited, listening. Sure enough, in a few minutes, she heard the little metallic clicks, as July slowly rotated the chambers in his pistol before going back to town to make his rounds. It set her teeth on edge that he would do it every night.

"Guess I'll go have a look," he said. "Won't be long."

It was what he said every night. It was true, too. Unless the rivermen were fighting, he was never long. Mainly he hoped that when he came to bed she'd want him. But she didn't want him. She had kept him at a distance since she was sure about the baby. It hunt his feelings, but she didn't care.

As she heard him walk off through the dankness, her spirits sank even lower. It seemed there was no winning in life. She wanted July and Joe to be gone, suddenly, so she would not have to deal with them every day. Their needs were modest enough, but she no longer wanted to face them. She had reached a point where doing anything for anyone was a strain. It was like heavy work, it was so hard.