Free Boone's Lick by Larry McMurtry

jail.

11
    U NCLE Seth had coached us carefully about what to say to Ma about the gunfight, and also what
not
to say, but the coaching didn’t work. Ma was not about to let one of her boys have a secret—I don’t think she even allowed Uncle Seth very many secrets. She soon wormed the whole story out of G.T.—she knew the wild bandit Jake Miller had actually had his hand on my rifle barrel, a moment I’ll never forget, Jake with his wild, mean eyes looking at me.
    â€œThe fact is you almost got killed, and your brother too,” Ma said. “And by a handcuffed man with a broken leg.”
    â€œAlmost,” I said. We were at what Ma called her “laundry,” a little creek that spurted into the Missouri about a hundred yards from our cabin. We also got our water from the little creek. Ma had been afterPa and Uncle Seth to dig a well, sometime when Pa was home, but he rarely
was
home, and showed no interest in well digging when he did show up.
    G.T. always skipped out on laundry days. He and Uncle Seth had taken our best wagon into Boone’s Lick to the blacksmith, in order to have a few things fixed before our big trip.
    â€œI made this lye soap too strong,” Ma said. “It’s itching me.”
    Something was itching me too: the need to talk about the Stumptown raid. We had been given firm instructions not to get killed and then had almost got killed.
    â€œI stood too close to Jake,” I said. “If I’d stood farther away he could never have grabbed my gun.”
    Ma was standing in the creek, the brown water washing around her legs.
    â€œLife’s full of ‘almost’s,’ Shay,” she said. “Lots of things ‘almost’ happen—some good, some bad. You almost got killed, but you didn’t. Don’t be studying it too close. It’s over—they hung the man. Just be smarter next time.”
    I wasn’t so sure I
would
be smarter next time. Mostly my life happened slow, but what had occurred on the ridge above Stumptown that day hadn’t happened slow. I was just now remembering certain things about it, though the fight had occurred nearly two weeks back. The night before last I remembered that Jake Miller wore a gold ring on one finger of the hand he grabbed my gun with—the fact that he wore a ring just popped into my mind as I lay on my pallet, trying to get to sleep. Maybe Jake had taken the gold ring off some of thetravelers he had robbed; or maybe it was his wedding band. I saw the ring when he had his hand on my rifle barrel, but it didn’t register on me for two weeks, which was a peculiar thing.
    â€œI’ve had plenty of ‘almost’s’ in
my
life,” Ma said. “So has my sister Patty and so has Rosie McGee.”
    â€œTell me about them,” I said. I didn’t know much about Ma’s family, just that they came from Kentucky.
    Ma stopped rubbing soap into one of Uncle Seth’s old shirts and looked at me, with her head tilted to one side a little.
    â€œI oughtn’t to be yarning with you,” she said.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBecause you couldn’t keep a secret if you tried,” she said. “Neva or Seth or Bill Hickok could worm all you know out of you in nothing flat.”
    That was true, I guess. I usually just come out with whatever I knew, hoping somebody would tell me some interesting secrets in return.
    I guess Ma decided she didn’t much care if I told her secrets, because she smiled a little and told me a whopper of a secret.
    â€œOne ‘almost’ was that I almost married your uncle Seth and not your pa,” she said. “And while that was happening, your pa was courting your aunt Patty, who turned him down and married your uncle Joe, who got killed in a train wreck when you were just a baby.”
    Ma looked at me solemnly for a moment, to see what I made of all that—then she laughed her good deep laugh and went