Characters
"For me," Graves says, "the kind of people that hard living carves are usually worth having around." That's the kind of people you meet in Goodbye to a River.
His own words about his second book, Hard Scrabble, also explain his first. "Though it is a place book rather than a people book, people inevitably edge into it from time to time...It is like Texas, where the civilized layers are shallow, but the traces and shades of people who have been here...matter so much that there is small chance of understanding the land without taking them a little into account." He says he's never been able "to view the earth and its ways without considering what it may mean in human terms.
"People want to belong to a place, need to belong to a place," he continued. "For such people, it makes life worth living to know what kind of bird is singing outside their breakfast room window. It satisfies something in them." Graves believes Texans are rooted in their land. "In a sense, that's all they've got," he said. In Hard Scrabble, he added, "I've liked so many people I've known and have always been so bloody glad to be alive."
So let's meet some of the characters in Goodbye to a River:
The Passenger -- Graves' six-month-old dachshund who accompanies him
on the trip. We never learn his name in the book (it's Watty), but the 12-pound
companion enjoys life on the river as much as Graves does. Graves admits, "Insubordination
occasionally invaded him," but Graves was glad he brought Watty along. (Watty
later died and was buried on Graves' ranch, but the stone that marked the grave
has been washed over with dirt and lost.)
The People -- Graves' term for Indians, primarily Comanches and Kiowas,
who occupied the area. "Only a few thousand strong in their most numerous
times, but total possessors of an empire of grass and timber and wild meat,
and constant raiders, for pleasure, far outside the limits of that empire."
In the book, we hear from a Comanche named Ten Bears: "If Texans had kept
out of my country, there might have been peace...The whites have the country
which we loved, and we only wish to wander on the prairie until we die."
Hale -- Graves' friend ("he was also a good friend and an old one and
the best kind of company") who drove him to the river to start his trip. "I
would have liked to have Hale along," Graves says, "but not many other people
I know." Often Graves' hunting and fishing partner through the years, Hale
said to Graves, "It was a hell of a time to be starting a canoe trip." (Graves
told Patrick Bennett in Talking with Texas Writers that Hale was actually
a composite of two friends. Otherwise, "the day-to-day details of what happened
and whom I met are pretty close to fact.")
merchant of Weatherford -- An old friend of Graves' who "piled papers
and maps on me and instructions to see things he knew of and to look for things
whose existence he suspected." Graves stopped to see this merchant on the
way to the river because he knew things such as "where Mr. Couts the banker
stood when he had his mighty gunfight." Graves says of this old man: "Not
many people like him will still be among us in another few years."
Sam Sowell -- A hermit who lived in a dugout on a hill ("the backest
back end of 180 acres that belonged to him") shaded by live oak trees in the
limestone and cedar country near Glen Rose. He lived on "flour and beans and
fatback and squirrel and mustard greens and such luxuries, and he dipped snuff."
When he needed something, he would cut two cedar posts and walk 3.5 miles
to a store on the Stephenville highway to trade them for 25 cents worth of
"whatever merchandise it was that he wanted." Sowell "changed in no respect"
as he grew old and later died. "If cedar posts went up a little in price,
so did snuff and fatback, and it all balanced out."
Davis Birdsong -- A ranch hand who has an encounter with a rattlesnake.
Sam Sowell stops Davis from killing the snake, saying, "By God, it had as
much right there as Davis Birdsong." Birdsong was a trucker who always came
back to the Brazos River area ("having in a major sense never left"). In his
green pickup he picks up Graves after the trip, and Graves says Birdsong "put
his disapproval softly, but he said the trip didn't make much sense to him."
Sherman family -- One of the memorable stories ("no end, no end to
the stories") Graves tells. The cabin of Ezra Sherman and his family in this
godforsaken wilderness was attacked in 1860 by Indians because Ezra "had failed
to furnish himself with firearms." Martha Sherman pays an awful price for
her husband's stupidity.
Willett -- Tiny, wizened and old, this proud man in bib overalls lived
beside the river in Parker County. Thick, gold-rimmed glasses helped his blue
eyes see, and he wore a big, dirty Stetson hat. Their interesting conversation
includes milking cows; Willett's son who "made him some money in Dallas, bought
him a little stock ranch" and "dressed up like Gunsmoke Sundays"; the illness
and death of Willett's wife; and salvation and the Bible ("Crap! Hit's the only
book they is!"). Graves telephoned a friend from Willett's cabin and arranged
to meet at a cafe on a nearby highway, but Willitt declined to join them because
"restaurant food made his belly burn." Graves adds, "There are traces along
the Brazos still of all the people who ever lived there, and of all the things
they ever did. An interested man with a little time and a little patience can
still find the whole story there -- find it and read it and study it. It is
quite a story, and well worth the trouble."
