40

WPA Slave Narrative Collection

Final Interview with Henrietta Lee

September 20, 1936

I’m finishing my story today, Grace. Don’t look sad, though it does an old woman’s heart good to see it. I’ll tell you, it’s been nice having your visits to look forward to. I sure do, and that’s a fact. It’s been a real blessing to be able to relive all of my adventures. The sixty years since? Well, those were good years, too. I was with my family. We were safe, and together. Jehu, Joan, Newt, and that rascal son of theirs, Win. Win Valentine. Have you ever heard of a more ridiculous name? He had a little too much Spooner in him, if you ask me. Turned out all right, I suppose.

“But I’m getting ahead of myself. I left you up on Cold Spring Mountain, didn’t I?

“Garet and Luke had ridden off to their deaths, I figured. I stared out across the valley for a long time, thinking I probably wouldn’t ever get to see it again. Mourning my best friend. I did a lot of that over those last few weeks. Couldn’t let it show, least of all to Garet. She was done being the strong one, it was down to me to do it. I was up for it, and that’s a fact, but when you’re always the strong one there ain’t ever anyone there to comfort you. Jehu was too upset himself. He made himself scarce … I’m getting ahead of myself again.

“I’d practiced what I was going to tell you, to make sure I told you everything. Didn’t do me much good, though. I’ve almost lost the thread.

“I stood on that mountain for I don’t know how long. When I finally returned to the campsite, Jehu was awake, poking the fire. Newt was asleep. ‘You didn’t go,’ he said. I didn’t answer him because it made me mad that he thought I might. I made a promise, and by God if you can’t say anything else about Henrietta LaCour you can say she’s a woman of her word.

“‘She’s riding down there to die.’

“I agreed with him, said, ‘To save her family, she sure is. It’s up to us to honor her, to keep the family together.’ Jehu nodded his head real firm like, like he’d come to a decision. He stood and nudged Newt awake with his boot, told the boy to go saddle his horse, that we were going down to watch Garet’s back. I asked him what he was doing, and he said, ‘It’s about time I started acting like the man in this family.’

“The three of us rode down to the ranch as quick as we could, telling Newt the entire way to do what we said and stay back out of trouble. I figured his dad was down there, and I figured he wouldn’t stay back out of the way. Newt was on fire to impress Joan. Jehu and I didn’t even need to say it aloud: he would be in charge of keeping Newt safe and I would watch Garet’s back.

“We rode up right as the shooting started. We dismounted and got our guns and approached real slow like, rifles shouldered, in a line. I turned around and walked backward behind Jehu and Newt to cover our backs. Didn’t think no one was back there, but you had to play it safe. Checked in with Newt and his voice trembled when he said OK.

“The gunfire’d stopped when we dismounted, so we were walking up to a dusty scene. Gun smoke, dust kicked up, moaning men, and then a couple of extra gunshots. I heard Garet curse, and that was it; didn’t care about our back none. We picked up our pace and who do we find standing over Garet but Valentine. Raised ax, ready to kill her. I was pulling the trigger when Newt hollered at his dad. Val barely registered his son was holding a gun on him when his head exploded like a watermelon. I’ve never seen anything like that, before or since. I wasn’t looking at Salter when he got his noggin blown off. The aftermath was bad enough. But there ain’t nothing like seeing a man’s head burst like that. I’ve carried that with me my whole life. Thought of it every day. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t mourn Ulysses Valentine for one day, but I did mourn Newt’s loss of innocence. I pulled him to me, covered his eyes, as soon as I could, but it wasn’t soon enough. He was shaking like a leaf, but we went over to Garet, to see how she was. Luke Rhodes came loping up. He’s the one who shot Valentine. Garet had a flesh wound on her arm and one on her cheek, but she was fine.

“Then we heard Joan screaming out for help. Stella’d gotten gut shot, never found out who did it. She lived maybe three, four minutes when we got there. She’d gone after Spooner. Threw a damn knife at him instead of shooting him. Stupid, stupid girl. Why? Why would she do that? Oh, I understand wanting to cut Spooner’s pecker off; he got her sister in the family way, and like I said before, Stella hated men. But goddamn, if you’re going after someone you make sure you kill ’em. You don’t throw a knife at them from thirty feet away.

“Joan didn’t. She picked up Garet’s shotgun from where she dropped it, stepped over her sister’s dead body, and pumped Jed full of lead. Died right there on our porch, with Luke Rhodes, our “no killing” sheriff, standing over him. That girl tossed the gun at Luke’s feet, daring him to do something about it. He never did.

“It was a mess. There were dead bodies everywhere. Dorcas, that bitch, lived. She was there, and, well, I guess I should thank her for making up some story about the shoot-out that didn’t involve us. She saw how broken Garet was and figured she would suffer enough from guilt in the little time she had left.

“Next morning, I had Jack escort Dorcas to Rock Springs and sent Domino on an errand for me. They were going to come right back, though. They wanted to stay on at the ranch, and that was just fine with us. Domino and Jack were good workers. Ought-Not, too. They all turned straight after that, as far as I know. Don’t know what happened to them after we left the Hole.

“That night that Stella died, that broke Garet. I’m surprised it took so long. I’d been expecting it to come earlier, but she was so focused on taking care of all of us … well, she thought she failed us.”

Mrs. Lee is quiet for some time, and I can see tears leaking from her eyes.

“I said she didn’t, of course I did. We had our ranch, and only one of us dying, with all we went through those couple of months? That’s a goddamn miracle. But we did go through all of it, and I’ve wondered over the years if we really had to. At the time I thought we’d had no choice, that Garet hadn’t had a choice but to take that bet. But you’ve always got choices, Grace. And every single choice you make ripples out through your life and every other person you meet. The people you love. The people you hate. Remember that, but don’t let it paralyze you, neither.

“I don’t regret those months because that was the last bit of hell-raising we got to do, me and Jehu. Not that he ever raised hell. No, we moved on. Became respectable. Started a freight business. First one in Northern California to switch to automobiles. Made a good living. Sold the business for a pretty penny, and that’s a fact.

“It would’ve broke Garet’s heart to know we left the ranch that she’d worked so hard to save for us. It was too remote, and once the town died … Joan wanted her son to go to school. I taught her to read and do her numbers, but she wanted her son to have real schooling. I couldn’t blame her. About that same time Newt came back from Cheyenne, a man and a professional. He’d been traveling around the West in a mobile photography studio, taking photos of Indians. It was a good line. Well, when Joanie saw him for the first time in five years? She fell instantly in love, much to Newt’s relief.

“So we did what was best for our family and moved to California. Claire and Ruby’d moved to San Francisco back in ’77 and had nice things to say about it. We didn’t move into the city. Could you imagine going from the Hole to that ruckus? No, we moved to a small town outside the city called Monterey. Started our freight business, Newt and Joanie ran a photography studio, and we lived our lives. Good lives. Full ones. A few ups and downs, but nothing we couldn’t meet. Joan and Newt got married, raised Win, had a couple children who didn’t survive the cradle. They died in the influenza, Joan and Newt. Took ’em fast. Win, he disappeared, oh, I guess about fifteen years or so ago. Just stopped coming around, writing letters. He was a bit of a scoundrel, but he was loyal, and he loved me and Jehu like we were his grandparents. I suspect he met a violent end, and Lord only knows where his remains are.

“Claire and Ruby? They moved to San Francisco, like I said, and opened up a detective agency. It was pretty successful for a few years. Did she try to write Garet’s story? She sure did. Nobody would buy it. Just like I told Garet in that cabin. Well, Claire and Ruby came on hard times, and Claire decided to make it an adventure story in hopes it would sell for a penny a page. You heard of those penny dreadfuls? Problem was twofold: One, by the time Claire did it, they’d fallen out of fashion. Two, those dreadfuls were read mostly by young boys and men. They weren’t interested in a female gang fighting the men. She gave me a copy and I read it. No idea where it ended up. The trash is where it belonged.

“Claire and Ruby were hard up, and our business was growing, so they came to work for us. Ran our office in the city. Both died in the big earthquake. Nineteen-oh-six.

“I know that’s a lot of death. I’m ninety-two years old, child. I’m the last one left. Jehu died in his sleep in ’31. Prepared his body for viewing myself. I didn’t want him to have any humiliation after he died, didn’t want people making fun of him. Of us.

“Oh, I’m not completely alone. I have some young women from my church who check on me regular, bring me groceries and a casserole once a week. Good girls, those. I’ve made arrangements. They know what to do. I’ll be taken care of when I pass, don’t you worry. It’s sweet of you to, though. It nice to have someone worrying over me.

“What happened to Garet? I was afraid you were going to ask me that.

“Garet wanted to see the Grand Canyon, she wanted to die there. That had been the next stop on her honeymoon back in ’64, but first they wanted to see Colorado. Thomas wanted to try his hand at mining, and when Garet saw that first herd of wild mustangs? She was in love. So they never made it to the Grand Canyon, but they always talked about going. Then you had the outlaws stopping in and telling stories about how it had to be seen to believed and how words didn’t do it justice.

“I wanted to see it, too. We all did. We’d all heard the stories at one time or another. More than that, I wanted to be with Garet when she died. I owed her that much, at least. I owed her more. My life. Jehu. Our family. No matter what we went through, right or wrong, should we have done this or that or the other, didn’t matter. All that mattered to me was that I was losing my best friend. I could see it, death coming for her. I asked him to wait, and he did. But he followed us every step of the way down the Owlhoot Trail.

“She tried to leave without us. She’d gone around and said goodbye without really saying goodbye. Trying to be sly about it. We all knew what she was doing. We let her make her plans, pack Ole Pete with supplies, saddle Rebel, and met her at the front of the house when she rode up well past midnight. I told her she was crazy if she thought I’d let her go off to die by herself.

“We left two days later. Luke had pulled me aside and told me it would take us a month to ride there, at the least, and that was going at a good clip. ‘She can’t go at a good clip,’ he said. I told him that knowledge was not to leave his mouth again, especially in front of everyone else. Garet wasn’t stupid; she knew how far away the canyon was. The journey wasn’t about the canyon, but about letting her die on her terms, in the saddle, with her family around her. By God, after everything Garet had given me, I was going to give her that.

“The day before we left, Domino returned from the errand I sent him on the day after the shoot-out. He came trotting up the lane ponying Old Blue behind him. I don’t know who was happier in that reunion, Garet or Old Blue. She hugged me so tight she almost cut off my breath. Didn’t say a word, just let her sob into my shoulder and told her I loved her.

“When I think of Garet too long, the grief,’ cause there’s still grief there, after sixty years, it changes to anger. She died too damn young. All that lost possibility. She could have been a great woman, greater in the eyes of the world, if she hadn’t been brought low by the colonel. Well, I blame him, but he was just being a man of his times. Of these times, too, if you want to know the truth of it.

“No, I’m not talking about her outlawing, I’m talking about her capacity for love and empathy, how she pretty much always put others before herself. She was driven by love, that woman. Love of horses is what gave us the ranch and allowed women to find us when they were brought low. The love of her family is what led her to pull that first bank job. She took that bet with Spooner for the possible glory, I’ll give you that. But underneath it she was driven by the responsibility of being the head of the household, taking care of her family after she was gone. If that ain’t love, I don’t know what is.

“We left on a Wednesday. Don’t ask me how I remember that. We took our time. It was a pretty ride. The trail hugged this wall of red cliffs to the east, and the plains we rode on for the first little bit were grassy. Prime grazing land. I saw Luke eyeing it with interest. Further south, it turned scrubbier, more desertlike, but the view. Lord have mercy, the desert can be a beautiful place. Utah has some of the nicest scenery in the West, and I’ve been all over it.

“Garet was well enough to ride on her own for about ten days, then we took turns riding double with her. Claire suggested we get a wagon for her comfort, I told her Garet wouldn’t want it, but she asked anyways. I was right. So we kept riding. We saw some Utes one day, riding the ridge of the cliffs. There were a few tense hours, but they eventually decided that a band of a bunch of women and two men wasn’t worth their time.

“There wasn’t a lot of civilization, to be honest. That’s why the outlaws used it to travel. The trail extended from way up in Montana to Mexico, and I’d be surprised if a thousand people lived on the whole of it. But the people we did run across were nice enough, for outlaws. Listen to me, judging outlaws when we were recently retired. We were able to buy some cannabis off of a cowboy for Garet’s pain.

“We’d been following the Green River for some time, knowing it joined up with the Colorado, which would lead us into the canyon. The further south we went, the fewer people we saw and the more beautiful it got. The last day we came to a dead end. We were high up on a mesa that narrowed into a point. Just below, the Green flowed into the Colorado. Green and red water ran alongside each other for a bit till they mixed together off in the distance.

“I was riding with Garet at the time. She sat in front of me, and she’d fallen asleep on my shoulder. I nudged her awake and told her we were here. She opened her eyes and I could see the confusion in them. It took her longer and longer to come to herself. When she finally did she gave me a heartbreaking smile. Her lips were dry and cracked, her eyes were circled with bruises, and her breath was coming in short little gasps.

“‘You’re my hero,’ she said. I told her to look at the view, partly because I didn’t want her to see me cry. She let out a little sigh and said it was just as beautiful as she expected. We all sat on our horses for a while, enjoying the beauty, coming to terms that this was the end of our journey. Garet inhaled deeply and whispered to me, ‘I better say my goodbyes.’

“I had my arms around her, to keep her upright on the horse, and I tightened my grip and told her I wasn’t ready. That it wasn’t fair, she had so much life left, so much more to give, and that I didn’t know if I could be the full me without her there, believing in me, respecting me, teasing me. She said I had Jehu, and I did, but it’s not the same, lovers and friends. You need both kinds of closeness to be whole, and I was losing that. It really did feel like someone was scooping my heart out of my chest.

“What I really wished was that it was just me and her. I wanted all of her at the end. I didn’t want to share her goodbyes. I’m a possessive and jealous person. Always have been. But Garet wasn’t, and I knew saying goodbye was important to her. She had messages to give everyone, and who was I to deny them the last little bit of her wisdom and love?

“Luke helped her down, and she held on to his arms to hold herself up. She leaned into him, and he held her like she was as delicate as an eggshell. She whispered into his ear, and they talked like that for a minute. We all looked away, not listening, to give them privacy. She ended with an admonishment to never shave his magnificent mustache. He laughed, but when he turned away from her, he was wiping tears from his eyes.

“She went to Claire next, who wasn’t trying to hide her grief, and you know what, I loved her for it. Garet asked her if she’d had fun these past few months, and Claire nodded and cried harder. Garet gave Claire her journal and said she hoped Claire still liked her after she read it.

“Joan and Newt had stayed at the ranch. Joanie told Garet she couldn’t go on a death march like that, not so soon after Stella. None of us could blame her, and Newt staying with her seemed the natural thing. He was the only one who could tease a smile out of her.

“She asked Jehu to escort her to the edge, help her sit down. Ruby wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and they said their silent goodbyes.

“She and Jehu sat for a good while on the edge of that canyon. I don’t know what they said, or if they said much of anything. We never shared our goodbyes with Garet to each other. I wanted to keep mine close, private, something to pull out on a bad day, something that would make me smile. I think Jehu wanted to do the same.

“The sun was starting to set when he got up. He walked straight past the fire and over to the picketed horses. I saw his eyes when he did. He couldn’t share his grief right then. I rose and went to Garet.

“I’ve seen a lot of sunsets, but nothing like that one. The colors in the sky were magnificent. The sky was aflame, the dark sky butting right up against it, pushing it below the horizon. When the sun finally dipped out of sight, the sky turned purple, and that’s a fact. Every color purple you can imagine. The underside of the clouds was lavender; closer to the ground was a deep, almost black purple. The dark blue sky lightened, if you can believe it, to a color I’ve never seen again. It wasn’t purple, but it wasn’t blue.

“We’d been silent; there was nothing left to say and too much to say. It was beyond us. Beyond me, at least. But that beauty, sharing it with Garet as her last moments on earth?

“She leaned her head on my shoulder, and I put my arm around her to hold her up. She felt light as a feather; she’d lost considerable weight on the trail, and I knew she’d been in a lot of pain, but she never complained. Not once.

“She exhaled so completely I thought that was it, but she spoke and told me this was what she wanted. She was right to come, it was beautiful. ‘Even if it’s not the Grand Canyon?’ She smiled up at me and told me she’d suspected she wouldn’t make it, but this was a wonderful substitute. She took my hand and it felt as fragile as bird bones, like it was hollow and would crumble at the slightest pressure. The important thing, she said, was that we were together, that she was with me. ‘You’re my favorite, you know.’ I teased her and said she probably told every one of us the same thing. She admitted it, but said she meant it with me.

“‘I knew you would be my confidante, my challenger, my one true equal and friend from the moment I saw you.’ I asked her how she could have known that. ‘You looked me straight in the eye. Never flinched. Never backed down. Don’t you ever lose that, Hatt. But be careful. I worry about you the most.’

“It took me aback, I have to admit. Before I could argue with her, she said, ‘We both know how cruel people can be, especially to women they don’t understand. I want you to live a long, long life. Promise me?’

“She didn’t need to spell it out for me. I understood. But I didn’t want our last moments to be so solemn. I asked her, my parting wisdom was ‘Don’t die’ and Luke’s was ‘Don’t shave your mustache’?

“That put a smile on her face. She closed her eyes and nestled closer to me. ‘It is a magnificent mustache. Very soft. Tickles in all the right places.’

“I laughed long and hard, and eventually my laughter turned to tears, and I told her what I felt. The words poured out of me, and I don’t know if she heard a one. When the sun finally set, and I saw that purple sky for the last time, Garet had gone limp. Her breath still came, but there were longer pauses between them. She was still in there, and I had to believe she could hear me. I said, ‘I love you, Margaret Parker, and I’ll never stop.’

“She breathed in one last time and exhaled her spirit to the heavens, and there was a smile on her face. I stayed there with her for a long, long time. I cried so many tears, took me forty years to cry again. Nothing could ever match the loss I felt that day. Jehu died in his sleep, which was a blessing. I didn’t want to watch him die like I did with Garet. I grieved for Jehu, of course I did, but he was an old man and we’d had a good life. Garet’s death was a tragedy.

“Garet gave each of us what we wanted, even if we didn’t know it ourselves. She gave Jehu a home. She gave Joan and Stella a mother figure. She gave Claire the adventure of a lifetime. She gave Newt safety and Luke genuine affection, if not love. Hell, she even gave Dorcas something. Dorcas went on to turn Connolly Enterprises into one of the biggest companies in the West, until she finally sold out to Hearst at the turn of the century. Retired as the richest woman in Colorado.

“What did Garet give me? If you don’t have an inkling after hearing me talk for all these hours, well … you haven’t been listening.”