Departure by Howard Fast Page B

the mules at a slow pace, so the freighter wouldn’t roll much. I was very tired, and after a while I didn’t use the whip at all.
    Then Maude came out of the wagon, sat down next to me. She looked at me and I looked at her, but she didn’t say anything. She pressed close to me.
    I whistled at the mules.
    Inside the wagon something was whimpering. It made me tremble to hear that.
    â€œReckon we’ll find water soon” I told Maude.
    She nodded mechanically. Her head kept nodding and I dozed, myself. I guess I kept dozing through the night, fell asleep toward morning.
    Maude woke me. The wagon had stopped, and the sun was an hour up. The mules had stopped on the bank of a slow, brown stream, lined with cottonwoods as far as I could see.
    Maude was pointing at the water.
    â€œDon’t you start crying now,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
    â€œI won’t,” Maude nodded.
    Ma called me, not very loud: “Dave, come here.”
    I climbed inside the wagon. Ma was lying on the bed, her arm curled around something. I peered at it.
    â€œDo you know?” she said.
    â€œI reckon I do. I reckon it’s a boy. Girls ain’t much use.”
    Ma was crying—not much; her eyes were just wetting themselves slowly.
    â€œWhere are we?” Ma asked me.
    â€œWe been traveling through the night. There’s a river out there. I guess we don’t need to worry about water.”
    â€œAll night—Pa back?”
    I said slowly: “I killed an Indian last night, Ma. He had Pa’s gun.”
    Then she just stared at me, and I stood there, shifting from one foot to another, wanting to run away. But I stood there. It must have been about five minutes, and she didn’t say anything at all. The baby was whimpering.
    Then she said: “You harnessed the mules?”
    â€œUh-huh. Maude didn’t help me—”
    Ma said: “You don’t tease Maude. You don’t tease Maude, or I’ll take a stick to you. I never seen a boy like you for teasing.”
    â€œUh-huh,” I nodded.
    â€œJust like your Pa,” Ma whispered. “It don’t pay to have a man whose heels are always itching—it don’t pay.”
    â€œNo use cryin’,” I said.
    Ma said: “What are we going to do?”
    â€œGo on west. Ain’t hard now to go a few hundred miles more. Reckon it won’t be hard. Pa said—”
    Ma was staring at me, her mouth trembling. I hadn’t ever seen her look just like that before. I wanted to put my head down on her breast, hide it there.
    I couldn’t do that. I said: “Pa told me. We’ll go west.”
    Then I went outside. I sat down on the wagon seat, looking at the river. I heard the baby making noises.
    I said to Maude: “A man feels funny—with a kid.”

The Little Folk from the Hills
    T HIS THING HAPPENED to me in an old, old land, where I had been riding forever with a tech sergeant, a staff sergeant and two thousand pounds of United States mail. The train stopped every six miles or so, and each time there was no real certainty that it would ever start again. We were at Agra or Lucknow or Patna or some place like that; it doesn’t matter very much, and one town looks like another in such a land. When we rolled into a town to stay for an hour or six hours or maybe all night, a bearer in a green and red and white uniform, with a great piled white turban topped by a splendid feather, more imposing than a Coldstream Guard on dress parade, leaped onto the running board outside of our compartment and said, “Tea, sahib?” or “Tray, sahib?”
    Whether he said tea or tray depended upon what arrangements we had made with the same kind of person ten or fifty miles back. The time of day had nothing to do with it. In that sun-kissed land which the British had civilized, it was always teatime, in the middle of the night and at dawn, too, and if the man with the turban said,