Free Boone's Lick by Larry McMurtry Page A

back to soaping the shirt.
    I was flabbergasted, of course. What Ma told methat morning gave me enough to think about for the next several years. Just hearing it was not the same as understanding it, either—but Ma wasn’t through. I guess she decided I was old enough to know all the family history that I had been too young to handle, before.
    â€œMy mother was married twice,” Ma said. “Her first husband was a drunk who fell off a barn and broke his neck. His name was McGee, and they had one child, a girl named Rosie.”
    At first what Ma said didn’t mean anything. I knew it was possible for a woman to marry twice, if one husband died or got killed in the war. Sometimes when Pa was up in the Indian country I wondered what Ma would do for a husband if he got killed. I even had the secret hope that if Pa
did
get killed Ma would marry Uncle Seth. Since Uncle Seth already lived with us he would know how to take care of us in case something happened to Pa.
    The point about the baby girl that Granma had had with Mr. McGee, the drunk, didn’t register at first. But Ma was still looking at me funny, as if she were waiting for me to solve a riddle or a puzzle or something.
    â€œMcGee. Rosie. Does that ring any bells?” she asked, with mischief in her look. Then the truth came to me like a clap of thunder: Ma was talking about the Rosie McGee who lived over the saloon and smoked cheroots at night. Ma was trying to tell me that Rosie was kin to us.
    â€œThat’s right, Rosie’s my half sister—she’s your aunt,” Ma said.
    I don’t remember much more about laundryday—my thoughts were in too much confusion. I helped Ma drape the clothes on the clothesline, not even noticing when they flapped against me and got me wet. Uncle Seth had almost married Ma. Pa had tried to marry my aunt Patty; and Rosie McGee was my aunt. The more I turned these matters over and over in my mind, the more I realized that the main puzzle had to do with Ma and Pa and Uncle Seth. If Aunt Patty, the older sister, had turned Pa down, why did Ma pick him? After all, she already had Uncle Seth, who was probably just as partial to her then as he was now.
    Ma could see that I was wrestling with a lot of complicated thoughts: it just seemed to amuse her. I tried to work up a set of questions I could ask her, but Ma put me off with a look. I had the feeling that she had said what she wanted to say about these matters and had no intention of saying another word—or at least not a word that made sense to a person my age, who didn’t know much.
    Next day when she and Neva and I were in the garden, digging spuds and putting them in a sack, several crows came flapping over the barn—they soon flew on toward the river, cawing as they went.
    Ma pitched a potato into the sack and gave me a little smile.
    â€œI pity the fate of the carrion crow,” she said. “Those black birds mate for life.”
    â€œWho cares what a crow does?” Neva said. A little later she took herself off to Boone’s Lick. The news was that Wild Bill Hickok was back in town.

12
    W OMEN will even sniff bread,” Uncle Seth informed me. We were out hunting Little Nicky, the biting mule. He had had a wild, biting fit during the night; in order to get clear of him Old Sam and the other mules had kicked down the pen and went running loose. We had got back six of them, but Little Nicky and a mule named Henry Clay were still missing. They had gone in the general direction of Stumptown, which led Uncle Seth to speculate that Little Nicky might have gone back to try and bite the bear.
    â€œWhy do women sniff bread?” I asked. It was something I often noticed Ma doing, when she made bread.
    â€œTo see if it’s fresh, I expect,” Uncle Seth said.“I have never sniffed bread in my life, which is the difference between me and a woman.
    â€œAnd when a woman comes to decide who to marry it comes down