I haven’t mentioned how I had to sit Sundays in church and listen to Pendrake’s gab. The only consolation was that Mrs. P. had to go as well, wearing her fine clothes, and it was a proud thing to sit alongside the most beautiful woman in town, with the men, including the ancient elders, stealing looks at her and their women all peevish. But them sermons! Pendrake’s trouble was he didn’t have no fire. Unlike my old man, he didn’t get no release from his religion, but rather was further bottled up by it. That might have kept him from getting killed by savages, but maybe it is worse never to open your spirit up to the wind.
Anyway, he always said a good deal about “sin,” and what I got to wondering now we was sitting there, was what in his opinion constituted such. You may remember with my Pa it was cussing, chewing, spitting, and not washing your face. It seemed likely Pendrake had another view. Anyway, we obviously wasn’t going to catch any fish, and lunch was over, and despite the Reverend’s remarks on the satisfaction afforded by our little talk, he was still uneasy-looking. I reckon a man who puts out words all the time gets to wondering whether they are ever being received.
So to oblige him, with the same motive I had called Mrs. P. “Mother,” I asked about sin. He wasn’t a bad fellow, and he had wiped off my face. I am like an Indian in that if I am treated nice I’ll try to make a return.
He had a wider-sweeping definition of sin than my Pa’s, and a longer list of specifics than my old man had give, probably because Pa was an amateur at preaching and couldn’t read. For Pendrake’s roster wasn’t properly his own but rather, as he admitted, that of the Biblical Paul.
“The works of the flesh,” answers the Reverend. “And ‘the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like.’ ”
It was a funny thing, the most important years of my rearing so far had been handled by my second father, who was Old Lodge Skins. Now you take away “envyings” from that list—for he didn’t covet much, owing to his belief he had everything of importance already—and you had a perfect description of that Indian’s character. Yet he was as big a success among the Cheyenne as a man could be.
As to myself, I had performed only a few of them crimes; on the other hand, I was still young.
For the rest of the day, though, I stayed fairly pure and even extended the period for several weeks on. That’s what white life did to me. First time I got soaked in civilization, I come down with pneumonia.
CHAPTER 10
I WAS REAL SICK, such as I had not been since earliest childhood. I don’t mind being wounded, but I hate to be sick. I mean, I don’t like to get a wound, but if you have to pay a penalty I’d rather it were that than any type of illness which will put you to bed. I don’t care to lay around unless some part of my flesh is missing and I can watch it knitting up.
You see there what I said about penalty. Despite my cynical ways as I approached the age of sixteen, the Reverend had got to me with his bluenose talk, and I had had dreams the night after the fishing expedition, in which I was doing my damnedest, though I knowed it was wrong, to make the golden chalice of woman into a slop bucket like he said.
You might say he give me the idea, just as he give me pneumonia by that outing in the rain, for that’s what I had in the morning though at first it seemed like just a cold and I got up as usual. But I felt so poorly at breakfast and got dizzy when Pendrake lit into his great mess of eggs though he was neat as always, so Mrs. P. puts her cool hand against my forehead, which was flushed at the same time that I was chilled to the bone.
Shortly I was back in bed, and an old doc with white whiskers come eventually but he didn’t have the medicine of Left-Handed Wolf, I can tell you. I was sick for about three weeks, and understood later that it was believed I should die during the first few days and the Reverend come and prayed over me.
Lavender told me that. He dropped in frequent when I started to improve. I remember the first time I saw him standing alongside the bed as I woke up from the napping with which I put in most of that time, I had the delusion I was back among the Cheyenne. He was very black of countenance, but the Indians sometimes painted themselves that color: anyhow, he wasn’t white.
So I made a remark in Cheyenne.
“Pardon?” says he, widening his eyes, and then I seen who he was and felt embarrassed.
“Now then,” he says, “you just rest easy. Don’t you worry none about old Lavender. He just come to see how you was.”
He generally referred to himself in that style, as if he was talking about a third person. I guess he had some theory that you wouldn’t suffer him to say “I” or “me.”
I says: “I thought you was an Indian.”
