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Short Stories & Tall Tales
The Saga of Bin Whitestock
Tom Sheehan
Some journeys, from here to there, are quite direct, with minor side attractions and distractions getting in the way of arrival. Other journeys, with or without known destinations at the start, are full of twists, turns, course changes, and dynamic revelations that come of interests discovered en route.
Chicago of 1894 had long ago exploded as the meat supplier of the country, and Binfield Whitestock, Jr., in a small gang of neighborhood kids who clawed at nicknames for each other, had settled upon him the strange moniker, “Gunga Bin.” For this appellation there was a simple answer: Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “Gunga Din,” had rushed across the face of America on the tongues of bards and on precious paper copies. In great acclaim, also because of a simple explanation, the poem reached into the dimmest parts of the land, into impoverished areas and minority backyards, the languishing slums, with heroic Gunga Din, just a native water-bearer, a "bhisti," being hailed by a poetic and educated British soldier in an openly admirable manner: “"Tho' I've belted you and flayed you, By the livin' Gawd that made you, You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!”
The adaptive name, “Gunga Bin,” brought a few snickers from insiders who contrasted it with Bin’s surname of Whitestock and found a certain glee in it. The boy paid no heed to the snickers or their intent.
As it was, orators and thespians and plain elocutionists stood before many audiences in Chicago’s open parks and street corners, saloons and taverns and theater stages, any place where a large group might be gathered, and boomed out or near sang the metrical qualities of Kipling’s poem. For enough of those presentations, at least in the poorer corners of the city, Gunga Bin Whitestock was in the audience, or at the edge of it. His pals made sure he was there. Unity, and all their apparent destinies, had become the clutch that gathered and held the gang in one ominous fist.
In particular, across the land old soldiers from the Civil War, and other notorious confrontations the world over, carried with them the “Barrack-Room Ballads” as if they had shared many of the exploits in the poems.
Then, as suddenly as can happen in a changing world, a hungry and expanding world, Gunga Bin was no longer there in his Chicago neighborhood, no longer a part of the neighborhood gang. His father pulled stakes for the family and the four Whitestocks headed for the open west where great adventures and opportunities could be found at the cost of hard work, durability and plain courage.
For long days of the journey, though, at the back end of a train or the tailgate of the family wagon, on routes cutting across miles of grass and swollen rivers at surge and torrent, Gunga Bin Whitestock looked down the long trail behind him to see if anybody followed, tried to catch up, and said he was missed.
But even as mild misery of separation grabbed at him, the land, including the topography, the geography and all the moving things thereon, woke in the boy constant discoveries his mind leaped to absorb at first encounter. He knew shortly into the journey that the air was empty of foul odors; the wind that carried that air brought sundry perfumes with it, strong, sweet, or memorable; and space, it appeared, could be proclaimed, explored, enjoyed, sometimes filled to capacity by a rush of thanks or a sense of joy impossible to describe.
Once, out on miles of prairie, in a high blue sky without end, a hawk caught Bin’s attention as it sailed, on the widest wings he had ever seen, atop an invisible thermal. The majesty of that flight, its absolute ease, the signals for turns showing in feathered tips of its wings, and the mastery of sudden dives and aerobatics, enthralled him, made him study the bird for a quiet hour.
The elder Whitestock, himself marking and measuring all activities around him, generally keying on the path ahead of the wagon, its place in the scheme of the wagon train, was aware of his son’s exploding interests. He too had seen the graceful hawk overhead.
“What in tarnation are you looking at, Bin?” the father said. The reins sat soft in his hands as he handled the two-horse team, even though the worn trail seemed to call the horses toward distant landmarks. Those marks were set out against a mountain so far away it looked to be a part of the sky; the land to the Whitestocks had never been so big, or the horizon so distant.
“That bird yonder, Pa, way up there in the blue, like it‘s going to float forever and ever.” The boy paused, as if holding onto a measurement of his own, then said, “But like it’s got nowhere to go.”
“Whoa, Bin,” Whitestock said. “That hawk isn’t sitting still. It can go anyplace it wants, but not without eating, it won’t. All critters out here, just like back there behind us, have to eat. Some work for it, like us. Some hunt for it like him up there keeping his eye out for a rabbit, a squirrel, and another bird. He sees from here to the end of the world almost, as far as you can see and then some. That includes everything moving in it, on it, or above it. He’s just waiting to claim what he likes. Just like us. When we see our piece of this new world, we’ll jump on it like he does a prairie rabbit.”
He shouted and pointed. “Look, there he goes.” And the hawk, at incredible speed, dove out of the blue sky and lit on some moving critter on the wide grass. “See him bring that thing back to the nest, Bin. He’s bringing the bacon home to the hungry ones.”
On an angled flight to a distant hill, steadily climbing all the time, the hawk carried in its talons a dark, moving thing that suddenly no longer moved. “That’s bacon for the larder, Bin. Bacon for the little ones sitting on some high place with their beaks like broken doors swung wide open to the wind.”
His father’s words brought Bin quickly back to Kipling’s poem, memorized by him in response to an inner demand. As young as he was, something in the poem, in the special salutation to Gunga Din, came through to Bin Whitestock every time he recited it. Or heard a word from it as if it was lifted from its place in the poem to salute him to wakefulness. He found easy comparisons to Gunga Din in people around him every now and then on the journey. Out on the grass or at the edges of towns and small settlements on the way, Native Americans appeared to stand at the low end of life’s order. He could argue that he too was one of those in the low order of life. He believed he was nothing more than what Gunga Din was, "a bhisti.”
Yet with that realization, the words of the poem began to sing for him, like an echo deep in a canyon, taking a deep breath. At the back end of the wagon he heard the voice of the poet coming alive in his own being, his mind checking itself, agreeing. The transfer of magic happened for him at sight of Indians bound in or for reservations. It broke loose the music that haunted him ... “In the ringin’ and the singin’, it came with the bringin’. Yon prairie folk burdened by their yoke, children and squaws guided from their wars, chiefs on twin shafts like ridin’ prairie rafts. All sorts of bhistis bouncin’ for a chance at vistas boundin’.”
The inward chants kept coming, the games kept playing, the words piling up in his mind.
And Gunga Bin Whitestock found a revealing thought cementing itself in his mind: He was pretty damned sure that he did not want to be a cowboy, to drive cattle for days on end, to get locked to a herd of cows for months at a time. He had heard all the stories from all the sources and the quandary sat on him all during the journey and into the first few years once they had settled on a piece of land in Colorado.
“What’s bothering you again today, Bin?” his father said one day when the boy was more contemplative than usual, a circumstance he had noticed in his son for longer periods of late.
“I must be wearing my thinking on my face,” Bin said to himself, as he pounded a loose nail back into place.
The Whitestocks were three years on an attractive piece of land sitting on valley grass and looking down on a good river and wider lands as far as the eye could see. Gunga Bin, still hearing music that nobody else heard, was coming up on his 16th birthday. His shoulders were wide, his muscles in tune, but his mind usually elsewhere from the task at hand. He did not fret the disparate difference between hither and yon, in his mind and down the road a far piece. Such a position often called for decisions, newer ideas to be leveled or elevated. The resolution of that quandary sat squarely in his mind, but only when he let it do so.
The pair had been working around their small spread for a full day; feeding animals, fixing wire and leather traces, knocking boards and their nails back into accustomed places. The sun, later in the day like a huge red/orange cracker, sat halfway down on a far mountain top nearly burnt red, and that glowing orb promised to settle out of sight later than sooner. All silhouettes across the land were in miniature measurement against the red sun’s unearthly spread.
The land had come to them after a diligent search, and was in a section of low hills of the greenest mountains Bin or his father had seen on their long journey. Comfort was a good part of their evenings after long days of work.
The elder Whitestock pursued his query on his son’s mind set. “It must be pretty deep in you, Bin, if I have to ask a second time, like it doesn’t want to come out yet, make up its mind, or yours.” For a long pause, he held back, and finally said, “When it has to be said, we’ll listen, Bin.”
Gunga Bin, hearing the music yet, far-ranging ideas taking place in his thinking, knowing some small kind of magic had overtaken him and a couple of his senses, thought of the family’s needs, how much loyalty they might demand, and how to split what might not be split-able. He deliberated on his answer.
He looked at what his father had built for the family, for the future; the cares and tendencies his mother had given totally to him and his sister who still cuddled one single doll that looked to have been through a few wars of its own; and his place in the mix.
Bin’s father had seen some of the signs that Bin had given off since the family had started west. One of the significant ones was Bin’s reciting the Gunga Din poem. He believed he had heard it more than 100 times, but there was more than the mere recitation. The head of the family had a keen musical ear that could be applied to other matters. For a year or so Bin had been playing games with his delivery of the poem, dropping in keen asides or interpretations, rhyme and rhythm changes, and word substitutions in many evening they sat around the kitchen stove or out on the summer porch lit by a lamp. The deliveries were significant. At night only faint stars and distant coyotes shared the changes with them. Now and then a horse in the barn shared a complaint.
The tendencies of his son were partly exposed, not without some concern of the hard-working father. He said to his wife on one occasion, “Bin’s making some headway into what he wants to do, but hasn’t declared what that is. We’ll wait on him to tell us. There’s something else building in the boy. He’s an excellent rider and roper, handles weapons as good as I do, knows his animals. He’s an asset to us all the way, but we have to think about his future.”
It was Bin who broke the ice on the quandary, one night in the kitchen where the family spent most of their evenings in cold weather after chores were finished.
“Mom, Pa, there’s some things that have been working on me for a long time. I have to say right out that I‘d rather not spend my life as a rancher, or a drover or a cowboy. I think I want to be a teacher. I think it’s the best thing for me, to work with books, words, students. I know it means I’d have to go to school someplace and leave you for a while. But I’m sure there’s someone who can take my place here. I’d be happiest teaching. I know it. It fills me all the time. I hear things that nobody hears. I have to use them. I hope you understand.”
“Have you thought which school you’d like?” his father said.
“No, I haven’t,” Bin said. “It doesn’t have to be too far or too special. I will pursue much on my own. I know what drives me most. I‘d go to any school, near here or far, but I’d prefer a school near us. I just have to have an opportunity to be able to come back this way and spend my life at what I love most.”
“Oh,” his mother said, “I have always known it, since I opened the first book for you, read the first adventures to you, and sounded the very first words on the page. You always had a light in your eyes, even in Chicago when you were so young.”
“Some of those words I have never forgotten,” Bin said. “It’s like they were planted in my brain the way we seed the ground and watch plants grow.”
“The Gunga Din poem did it as much as anything,” she said. “I saw the magic light you up.”
Bin’s father said, “It’s an easy matter, where you can go, son. With your mother’s home schooling all these years, it’ll be easy to get you into Colorado College. I know Bill Slocum over there. He’s the president, and we can make some kind of arrangement. You don’t have to be a drover or a rancher all your life. Not at all.”
Binfield Whitestock, successful rancher, tolerant of many things in life, remembered the way his son spent so much time looking behind them as they moved this way on their first great journey together. His son, he was sure, had another great journey coming his way.
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