RGL e-Book Cover 2018©
RGL e-Book Cover 2018©
THE buffalo coat he wore was thirty years old and showed how big a man he had been in his earlier life. It was loose on him now, and a little heavy. His sons and daughters and two of his grandchildren were around him, and most of New Hope stood on the wharf, and stevedores were loading the last pieces of cargo. The T.J. Jackson heeled gently to the Missouri's current, and smoke poured out of its twin stacks, and high up on the Texas deck the pilot watched the scene with an impatient eye. A mate called: "Stand by." Henry Senn was going down the river to spend the winter with his oldest daughter in St. Louis.
There was a good deal of talk around Henry Senn. He kissed the grandchildren and his two daughters, although he was no man for a display of affection, and shook hands with Tom, the younger son. It was the older boy, Bob, who went up the gangplank with him. They climbed to the passenger deck and stood at the railing, overlooking the wharf.
Bob said, with a heartiness that fooled neither of them: "The winters get pretty cold here. You'll like it at Josie's. We'll see you in the spring. Don't worry about the business."
The throaty whistle of the T.J. Jackson burst over them, and on the wharf Henry Senn's youngest grandchild began to cry. Bob reached for his father's hand and turned away, but Henry Senn called—"Wait!"—and watched his son turn back. "I have always been pleased with you. You have only one fault, which is to go along with the crowd. Remember this... it makes no difference what others say or do... don't you ever do anything that you personally think is wrong. Good bye." His son turned swiftly and went down the steps and across the gangplank. All the people were crowding the wharf, and the New Hope band had gathered in the background. The boat's idling engines pulsed steadily, and the deck crew dragged in the gangplank, chanting:
Way down, way down
Way down in Egypt land.
Wind came up the river strong and cold, and a sparkling winter mist lay over the housetops of New Hope, and the roofs and corners of the warehouses made a gaunt show in the day.
Henry Senn lit a cigar, seeing his family standing in line on the dock. His two boys were like himself, their cheeks held a half-severe expression—revealing nothing. Emma, always sentimental, was crying, but Alice, who was the youngest, showed him a still, soft face—as though she were dreaming of the years gone by.
Emma's voice was indistinct in the noise. "Father, don't smoke too much. You'll like it at Josie's. Be sure to write. Don't plan to come back before April."
Dike Miller pushed through the ranks, still wearing his leather blacksmith apron. Dike yelled: "Bring me some oranges when you come upriver, Henry."
"Sure," said Henry Senn. "Sure."
"Some men," cried Dike Miller, "sure get to lead an easy life."
"For bein' honest," said Henry Senn. "See you next year."
THEY were lying, and he was lying. He knew it—and they
knew it. There would never be another spring in New Hope for him.
He replaced the cigar and put his long, crooked fingers around
the railing. His heart was a distant, sluggish murmur; the
buffalo coat weighted his shoulders. That afternoon he had
climbed the road to the cemetery to stand alone by his wife's
grave and to say to her, in his mind, those last things a man
thinks of saying.
Distant, in the core of the T.J. Jackson, bells jingled, and the mate was calling: "Let's go spring and stern lines!"
There were a lot of people on the wharf, and the band was going to play something. Billy McDermott, whom he had never liked, stood at the edge of the wharf. Looking up Custer Street, he saw the bare tracery of the locust trees in the courthouse square and the bronze statue of the Civil War soldier. Thirty- seven years before, he had pitched his solitary camp where the town square now stood. At that time a wild-plum thicket grew there, and no white man lived nearer than a hundred miles. All that New Hope now was had come to pass before his eyes.
Bells jingled again. The sudden thrust of the paddle wheels shook the T.J. Jackson, and the mate bawled—"Let go bow line!"—and the wharf began to slide by. People were calling to Henry Senn, their strong good byes floating across the widening water. Billy McDermott lifted his hat. Billy had fought him for thirty years, but that enmity faded now before the fact that both of them were saying farewell to a past that would soon be gone.
The New Hope band struck up "Auld Lang Syne," strong and slow, and the people on the shore were singing. Henry Senn removed his hat and held it against his breast, his white, close-cropped head motionless. Emma lifted her youngest child so that he might see his grandfather clearly this last time. His two boys never moved, and he was proud that they showed him no sentiment. Alice, who never cried, turned swiftly and vanished through the crowd.
The T.J. Jackson wheeled in the stream, turning about, and Henry Senn walked around the deck to have his last sight of the town. The shapes on the shore were diminishing, and he no longer saw them clearly. The band's music softened and died over the water, and the T.J. Jackson's great whistle drowned all other sound. New Hope slid away.
A SILVER mist hung over everything. Chimney smoke spiraled
grayly above New Hope, and the flag on the Central School whipped
in the wind. From his position he saw the gridiron pattern of the
streets, the oak groves and slim poplars along the Omaha road.
Wexler's Meadow—where he had shot and killed the outlaw,
Curly Ben—was a brown square in the distance; and above
this was the low cemetery hill where lay his wife. Beyond this
lay the open prairie, mist ridden and obscure.
The stages of his life were pretty clear. In the beginning he had been young and foot-loose, roaming these plains with his ears and eyes sharpened to the risks, with the strong savor of the land's wildness having a way with him. The frontier was his life. He had started with it and grown up with it, through the boisterous days of New Hope's youth. He had married and raised his family. Afterward, with his wife gone, his children matured, and, the needs of his life satisfied, the days had gotten slow and pretty long. This was the looking-back time in which a man had to live his life again, and compose himself for his ending.
The stern of the T.J. Jackson heeled around Sawyer's Bend and then, strangely and completely, the silver mist closed down, and New Hope was gone, and there was nothing on this prairie but emptiness. The intervening years were wiped away, and the prairie lay again, flawless and unexplored, as it had been in the beginning. It was like a last message to him—telling him that a man's life was this way, his little habitations and monuments fading and nothing remaining but the distant horizons that a man had to keep searching. There was always a frontier, here or somewhere.
He stood here, bareheaded and still, feeling the boat and the river bear him along, away from New Hope, away from this episode that had been his life, away from this earth. The land was a mist, and the sky was a mist, and he seemed to be released from all that he had been, and he felt quite free, and his eyes, old blue, sought westward, and distant excitement warmed him, as long ago.
The mate came by and said: "Pretty cold out here, Mister Senn."
He nodded, not really hearing. This was the end of one life, the memories and forms of which were fast fading—even the shapes of his children and the sounds of their voices. Probably they would not understand this, but his own mind was pretty clear. He was a stranger to all of them. He was alone and young again and a little anxious to be on his way, toward a fresh and misty land and its adventure.