While Maggie was buttoning Newt into the nice brown coat he wore to church, Graciela, in her despair, turned over a pot of beans--a small river of bean juice was soon flowing across the kitchen floor.
'If you don't die, clean up the beans,' Maggie said, as she hurried Newt out the door.
Then she regretted her sharpness: Graciela was a poor woman who had lost five of her twelve children; she had suffered so many pains in life that she had become a little deranged.
Maggie could already hear the strains of the new church organ--it had just arrived from Philadelphia the week before. Amanda Stewart, who had some training in music, had been enlisted to play it.
'Will we see Captain Woodrow?' Newt asked, as his mother hurried him along.
'Yes, and Jake too, I expect,' Maggie said. 'Maybe Captain Woodrow would walk with us to the graveyard.' Newt didn't say anything--his mother was always hoping that Captain Woodrow would do things with them that the Captain seldom wanted to do.
Jake Spoon, though, was always jolly; he came to their house often and played with him, or, sometimes, even took him fishing. Jake had even given him an old lariat rope, Newt's proudest possession. Jake said every ranger needed to know how to rope, so Newt practiced often with his rope, throwing loops at a stump in the backyard, or, if his mother wasn't looking, at the chickens. He thought roping birds would be safe, though he was careful not to go near old Dan, the quarrelsome tom turkey that belonged to Mrs. Stewart.
'Old Dan will peck you, Newt,' Mrs.
Stewart warned, and Newt didn't doubt. Old Dan had pecked Graciela, causing her to weep for several days.
Though Newt, like his mother, hoped that Captain Woodrow would come and do things with them, the occasions when he did come frightened little Newt a little.
Captain Woodrow didn't play with him, as Jake did, and had never taken him fishing, though, on rare occasions, he might give Newt a penny, so that he could buy sassafras candy at the store where his mother worked. Jake Spoon's visits usually ended with Newt laughing himself into a fit--Jake would tickle him until he went into a fit--but nothing like that happened when Captain Woodrow came. When the Captain came he and Newt's mother talked, but in such low voices that Newt could never hear what they were saying. Newt tried to be on his best behaviour during Captain Woodrow's visits, not only in the hope of getting a penny, but because it was clear that Captain Woodrow expected good behaviour.
Newt was always a little glad, when Captain Woodrow got up to go, but he was always a little sorry, too. He wanted Captain Woodrow to stay with them--his mother was never more pleased than when Captain Woodrow came--but he himself never quite knew what to do when the Captain was there. He had a whistle which he liked to blow loudly, and a top he liked to spin, and a stick horse he could ride expertly, even though the stick horse bucked and pitched like a real bronc, but when the Captain came he didn't blow his whistle, spin his top, or ride his stick horse. Newt just sat and tried to be well behaved. Almost always, after Captain Woodrow came, his mother cried and was in a bad temper for a while; Newt had learned to be cautious in his playing, at such times.
Maggie and Newt hurried across the street and crept into the back of the church just as the brief service began.
'Ma, I can't see,' Newt whispered. He didn't like being in church, which required him to be still, even more still than he was used to keeping during Captain Woodrow's visits. At the moment all he could see was a forest of backs and legs.
'Shush, you be quiet now,' Maggie said, but she did hoist Newt up so he could see Amanda Stewart play the new organ. All the rangers were there but Deets, one of Newt's favorites.
Deets was skillful at devising little toys out of pieces of wood or sacking and whatever he could find. So far he had made Newt a turkey, a bobcat, and a bear. Of course, Deets was black; Newt was not sure whether he was exactly a ranger--in any case he could not spot him in the church.
Then his mother whispered to him and pointed out a thin man standing with the rangers.
'That's the Governor,' she said. 'It's nice that he came.' Newt took no special interest in the Governor, but he was careful to squeeze his eyes shut during the prayer. Graciela had made it clear to him that he would go to hell and burn forever if he opened his eyes during a prayer.
When the praying was finished the rangers went past them out of the church, carrying a wooden box, which they set in the back of a wagon. Jake Spoon was helping carry the box; when he went past Newt he winked at him. Newt knew that winking at such a time must be bad, because his mother colored and looked annoyed.
Maggie .was annoyed. Jake ought to have better manners than to wink while carrying a coffin.
Newt adored Jake; it was not setting the boy a good example to wink at such a solemn time.
What made it worse was that Gus McCrae looked so low and sad.
Sometimes Maggie wondered why she had fixed her heart on Call, and not on Gus--she and Gus were more adaptable people than Woodrow ever had been or ever would be. She thought she could have stayed alive and done nicely by Augustus, had she felt for him what a wife should feel for a husband; and yet, through the years, it was Woodrow she loved and Jake she tolerated. Even then, walking up the street behind the wagon, Maggie felt her spirits droop a little because Woodrow, mindful of the solemnity of the occasion, had walked past them without a nod or a glance.
The hope Maggie held, above all, was that her son would be able to live a respectable life.
She herself might manage to die respectable, but she had not lived respectable, not for much of her life; she placed a high value on it and wanted it for her son. He might never manage to be a hero, as his father was; he might never even be called to do battle--Maggie hoped he wouldn't. But it wasn't necessary to fight Indians or arrest bandits to be respectable.
Respectability was a matter of training and guidance--learning not to wink in funerals, for example, or keeping one's eyes closed during prayer.
There was no managing Jake Spoon, though; there never had been. Maggie knew it, and it was bittersweet knowledge, because, for all his faults, Jake did his best to help her, and had for the whole time she had had Newt. It was Jake who carried her groceries home, if he noticed that she was heavily laden; Jake that tacked up a little shelf in her kitchen, to hold the crockery--Jake Spoon did the chores that Woodrow Call would rarely unbend to do, even if he had the time. Maggie knew her own weaknesses: she could not do entirely without a man, could not be
