by The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King- A Novel of Teddy Roosevelt
I should have recognized him. I had that gift never to forget a face. “Which regiment, son?”
“The Ninth, sir.”
I still couldn’t recognize that face. It irritated me. “I hope you didn’t watch me embarrass myself.”
“No, sir. You charged like a windlass with a bandanna flying from your hat. It was edifying—better than having a trumpeter at your ear.”
The boy hadn’t seen me crawling on my knees without my specs. I was grateful for that.
I returned to my carriage. The porter brought me another one of the railroad president’s porcelain cups. I watched Mount Marcy disappear into the distance with its desolate peak. My mind collected around details—the chips in the ceiling of the Red Room, the White House’s ragged carpets that Edie would inherit. And then it all began to drift. I imagined myself in Buffalo Bill’s circus. The whole caboodle: Edith wrapped in an unfamiliar coat, guarding a rifle as tall as she; Alice in the tulle of a high-wire acrobat, with Ted, Kermit, Ethel, Archie, and little Quentin as her assistants. And I was wearing a black wide-brimmed hat like the kind Custer favored. We had become the featured attraction of Cody’s cavalcade—the Roosevelt Family of Sagamore Hill, sharpshooters, acrobats, and entertainers. Our likeness was on every handbill and appeared in painted colors on the canvas flaps of the master tent.
I’d abandoned politics and writing for the show business, in my phantasm. Edie didn’t complain. She took control of our salary. Little Eleanor had come with her overbite and gawky limbs, a kind of ragged Cinderella. She helped us change our costumes and was part of Alice’s performance, a minor acrobat. I didn’t have much of a tussle with Buffalo Bill. He had his act and we had ours. But whenever we appeared, folks stood up and yelled, “The Cowboy, the Cowboy—and his Clan.”
We were in a panorama of cowboys, and that still didn’t seem to count. Cody’s buckskin garb had become too familiar, like his silver beard and his waspish waist. He could have been cut from cardboard. But I was the gunfighter with stubby fingers and specs, and I had no ambition beyond that. I’d become the antithesis of everything Brave Heart had believed in. I didn’t rescue stray kittens at Cody’s Wild West, or provide lodging for newsboys. I was an entertainer now. I made my entrance on Little Texas, my cowpony, retrieved from Cuba and our barn at Sagamore Hill, with that white star on his forehead. I waved my black slouch hat.
“Ya-ha-haw!”
Then Alice did a somersault; diamond-shaped sequins had been sewn into her costume by little Eleanor, Alice’s tailoress; the diamonds shimmered in the tent’s darkening light. I went round and round with my Winchester, shooting bobbins out of the air—the bobbins exploded into little feathers of wood. Then Edith stood on a platform, wearing her fireman’s leather coat. I shot off the clasps, the pockets, the metal tips of her collar, until the coat looked like a relic from a rag shop. I’d grazed her arm, and a splotch of blood appeared in the leather like an inkblot. Poor Edie was mummified with bandages from all my misfires. But that’s what drew the crowds—the sense of danger that Cody himself couldn’t provide. Alice dangling on the high wire without a net while Quentin drummed below and Kermit tooted on his tin trumpet, Ethel danced like Salome in a tutu and Archie watched with his mouth agape.
Then the bleat of the train broke through the Wild West like a grim warning, and a reminder of where I was, and we arrived at Exchange Street, with its barnlike roof. There were folks outside my window, men and women with wonder—and fright—on their faces, as if they were looking into the blue eyes of immortality. The soldiers and the bodyguards assembled—a phalanx formed like the funnel that couldn’t seem to protect McKinley at the world’s fair. I stepped out of the carriage with that toothy Roosevelt grin.
People jostled against that funnel of soldiers. Bayonets were drawn. I didn’t want a riot in the middle of the station. “There could be blood,” the young captain whispered in my ear. But I didn’t see any anarchist angels with blond curls. I stepped into that roaring crowd of greeters—that was the Roosevelt way.
“Mr. President, Mr. President.”
Men and women were itching to touch my sleeve. Soldiers crept between us, shoving whoever they could. I had to keep a lad from falling. “Stop that!” I shouted.
Babies were thrust at me. I wanted to rock them in my arms, reassure a mother or two, but I didn’t dare in a field of bayonets that reminded me of monstrous porcupine quills. I could feel my freedom slip away with a sudden pull, like the silent shrug of a straitjacket. I didn’t require bayonets, not at all. Deep within my throat, I let out the Rough Rider rip.
YA-HA-HAWWW
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE AUTHOR WOULD LIKE TO THANK GEORGES BORCHARDT, Lenore Riegel, Marie Pantojan, Dave Cole, and also Robert Weil, the Captain Ahab of publishing, in his continual search for the blinding white whale of perfection.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Frontispiece: Smith Collection / Gado / Getty Images
Page 1: FPG / Getty Images
Page 77: G. Y. Coffin for the Washington Post (MPI / Getty Images)
Page 173: Frances Benjamin Johnston (Library of Congress)
Page 233: Library of Congress / Corbis / VCG via Getty Images
Page 253: Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images
OTHER BOOKS BY
JEROME CHARYN
PUBLISHED BY LIVERIGHT/NORTON
Bitter Bronx: Thirteen Stories (2015)
I Am Abraham: A Novel of Lincoln and the Civil War (2014)
The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson: A Novel (2010)
Johnny One-Eye: A Tale of the American Revolution (2008)
Copyright © 2019 by Jerome Charyn
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