It was a real fine supper we had in his honor that evening. Barton and Ferd and Jim—our husbands—were there too, naturally, and had brought all the children, and the house was chock-full of laughter and loud talk, good smells and babies crying and the clatter of dishware. I thought the tables might split from the weight of all the dishes set on it. There was fried pork and possum stew and sweet corn, yams and snap beans, mashed turnips, red gravy, corn bread and molasses—just everything.
He’d learned a good deal about his Clements kin from his daddy the Reverend, and he wanted to be caught up on what Clementses had got married lately and what babies had been born and who’d passed on and been buried. He’d come to us direct from visiting his family up in Mount Calm, and he said all the Hardins was in good health and spirits. His daddy was busy as ever with his good works, teaching and preaching all over Hill and Limestone counties. His momma and sister Elizabeth and little brother Jefferson Davis were doing just fine, and his big brother Joseph had married a Mount Calm girl and was fixing to move to Comanche to open his own law office.
It wasn’t till we moved the children to another part of the house and cleared off the table and left it to the men that he talked about his troubles with the law. Daddy brought out a jug and passed it around for them all to fill their cups. Matches flared and pipes and cigars got lit, and the room got misty with good-smelling smoke. While Momma and Minerva tended to the children, me and Mary Ann washed the pots and dishes in the open dog-run, trying not to make too much clatter so we could listen in on the men’s talk.
Wesley told about having to shoot three State Policemen in self-defense up in Bell County just a couple of weeks earlier—and before them, a bounty man who’d tried to back-shoot him outside a saloon in Fairfield. “I didn’t kill the bounty man,” he said, “I just shot him where his pleasure hangs. “ That got a good laugh at the table. “Leastways he won’t be siring any more sons of bitches into this world,’ Daddy said. Me and Mary Ann grinned at each other with our faces turned away from the men.
Then Barton asked him outright if it was true he’d shot a Nigra man off a fence in Hillsboro just for looking mean at him as he rode by. Barton said he’d read it in a newspaper. No Clements would of been so rude as to ask Cousin Wesley such a thing, but all the Browns were mannerless that way and didn’t know any better. Me and Minerva both knew we’d disappointed Momma by marrying into that family, though she never said it. It’s some hard choices we all have to make in this life. Mary Ann had done better, marrying the only Denson boy to be had.
Wesley didn’t seem to mind being asked, however, and he said what we Clements already knew to be so—that he never killed anybody but in self-defense. There were such stories told about him. That he’d snuck up and shot some gambler in Towash in the back of the head to get back some money he’d lost to him. That he shot just about every Nigra man, armed or not, who’d ever so much as looked cross-eyed at him. That he’d shot a fellow in a hotel for snoring too loud, for Pete’s sake! I always suspected Barton believed such terrible lies about him—though he wasn’t so stupid as to say so to me or mine—so it was good to hear Wesley tell him the truth of it from his own mouth. “It ain’t never wise to trust the word of a stranger nor a newspaper,” Wesley told him. I nodded at Mary Ann and hoped Barton saw me do it.
Wesley said there were so many lawmen and bounty men looking for him that he was starting to feel like a duck on a hunting pond. “I think I’d best light out for a spell,” he said, “before somebody blows the feathers off me in the middle of the night.” He’d talked it over with his daddy and they’d agreed it’d be best if he laid low in Mexico until such time as the Democrats finally got control of the state and rid Texas of the State Police.
There was a lot of loud talk then about Mexico. Jim Denson’s daddy had been with the Texans who fought under Zack Taylor in the Mexican War, and he’d given Jim a pretty picture of the country. “Daddy said it’s nice weather, and the food’s real good, and—” He gave a glance our way and lowered his voice, but the way they all laughed was enough to let us know he’d said something about Mexican girls. Mary Ann gave a tight-lipped look and shook her fist in front of her where Jim couldn’t see it.
“That’s how my daddy seen it, anyway,” Jim said. “He said it’d be a fine place to live if it wasn’t so damn many Mexicans down there.”
But Daddy and the boys didn’t have a good word to say about Mexico, even though none of them had ever set foot in it. All that mattered to them was what the Mexicans had done at the Alamo some thirty-five years before. “Going to live in Mexico’s like going to live with some sonbitch who killed your kin,” Daddy said.
Manning told Wesley he ought to forget about going to Mexico and instead join up with him and my other brothers on the cattle drive they were getting ready to make to Kansas. Columbus Carol was bringing up two thousand head from San Antone, and he wanted my brothers to round up another herd of a thousand head or so in the Sandies, then take both herds up to the railhead at Abilene. “We’d be proud to have you throw in with us,” Manning told him. Everybody thought that was a fine idea and said so. Manning said that as far as the law was concerned, Wesley wouldn’t have a thing to worry about on the trail. Columbus Carol had said there was some sort of agreement between the big Texas drovers and the governor. “Columbus ain’t never come right out and said so,” Manning said, “but it’s a common suspicion that Ed Davis is getting a slice of every drover’s profits in exchange for keeping the police away from their trail crews.”
A marshal might come around to a trail camp every once in a big while, Manning said, but they were most of them smart enough to halloo the camp from far enough away to give any cowboy on the dodge time to make himself scarce. “We give the badge a plate of beans and a cup of coffee, same as we would anybody else,” Manning said, “and then he goes his way and we go ours. He can say he’s done his job, and nobody in the trail crew is the worst off for it.”
Wesley said he’d think on it, and in the meantime he’d be proud to help them with the roundup. That suit everybody just fine, and Daddy sent the jug around the table again. Pretty soon they were all singing “Sweet Betsy From Pike,” and adding a lot of verses of their own making that had me and Mary Ann blushing and laughing into our hands.
Momma came out of the other room and told them to hush all that loud profanity or she’d drag every one of them by the collar down to the creek and throw them in. So they took their party out to the barn and kept at it till nearly midnight, when I reckon Daddy ran out of jugs. I bet there wasn’t one of them who didn’t have a sore head the next day.
Me and my sisters wasted no time arranging a barn dance for the next Saturday night so Cousin Wesley could meet our neighbors. Of course, the neighbors we most wanted him to meet were the unmarried girls of age. We’d come to find out he didn’t have a sweetheart waiting for him anywhere, and we believed such a sorrowful condition was in bad need of rectifying. Since it was me and my sisters that arranged for that barn dance, you could say it was us that were responsible for him meeting Jane.