Code of the West

by Aaron Latham

  “Becky! Becky! Git up!Becky! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to kill you.”

  The Comanche leaned down from his horse, pulled his spear from the unmoving girl, and aimed it once again at Jimmy. The boy felt a prickling sensation in his chest where the wound would be. The warrior with the death-black face motioned once again for the mother to hand her son up to him. This time, relenting, Lucy Goodnight bent over, grasped Jimmy under his arms and lifted him up, resigned to saving her son by losing him. The boy saw both warriors—the one painted yellow and the black-faced killer—reaching out for him. They both wanted him. Jimmy hoped his mother would give him to the warrior with the yellow war paint. And she did. At least he hadn’t killed Becky.

  Jimmy found himself sitting just in front of the yellow-painted brave on the back of a spotted horse. While the warrior held him tightly, the boy clung to the oversized Comanche saddle horn with both hands and stared down at his mother. He was crying and the tears fell on the purple stars on his cheek. The Big Dipper overflowed.

  Jimmy saw a brave on foot rush up to his sister, grab hold of her red hair, slash, and pull hard. Becky’s carrot-colored scalp came off her head with a sickening “pop.” Jimmy leaned over and threw up on his mother.

  Then another brave attacked his mom and began tearing at her soiled clothes. This was no doll being played with now. It was too close. It was life-sized. It was his mother. Lucy Goodnight bravely fought back, defending her apron, defending her bodice, defending her skirt, but she was no match for the warriors’ hands. She was fighting for the last rag of her clothing when a loud voice interrupted her undressing.

  “Let ’er go! Damn you!”

  Turning to see who was shouting, Jimmy recognized the familiar figure of David Falkenberry, another of his relatives, racing toward them, brandishing a rifle. He had come from the fields on the run, out of breath.

  “Put ’er down!”

  Seeing the rifle pointed at him, the startled warrior released his grip on Lucy Goodnight. The mother crumpled to the ground beside her torn, crumpled clothing.

  Jimmy felt the horse under him begin to run. Other white men were coming from the fields, carrying guns, firing shots, frightening the warriors. The Comanche retreat had begun and Jimmy was swept up in it.

  “Mama!” Jimmy called. “Mama! Mama!”

  Jimmy saw his mother falling farther and farther behind. She was calling after her son, and he was calling back to her, but her voice grew fainter and fainter.

  Pursued by his mother’s voice, Jimmy was carried off in the middle of a stampede of screaming warriors. Holding tight to the big horn, he was afraid of falling and being trampled. As an unknown world galloped crazily toward him, Jimmy kept looking back. He watched the family fort grow smaller and smaller and then duck behind a hill. The last trace he saw of his home was a rising cloud of feathers: the Comanches had ripped the guts out of all the feather beds.

  74

  Jimmy rode through a young feminine landscape. All the shapes were rounded and softened by the new spring growth. The hills rolled gently. The oak trees hung heavily over the land like great leafy breasts. The bluebonnets, which were in full flower now, made the land seem almost gaudy. Even in the midst of his fears, the boy couldn’t help admiring the scenery through which he moved. It comforted him. It was so soft and gentle and nurturing that the violence he had witnessed seemed almost impossible. Cradled against this green bosom, he found it harder and harder to believe in death, which he didn’t understand very well anyway, and rape, which he understood even less well, and the mutilation of his grandfather, which he understood all too well because he had seen it done to calves.

  He would almost succeed in losing himself in the spring landscape and then all the horror would come flooding back over him. She was dead. The boy felt as if he had already been mutilated, as if he had already had an organ cut away, as if he had already lost the best part of himself. Yes, she was dead. He had seen her killed. He couldn’t believe it, but he had to believe it. He had no right to be riding in the sunshine, no right to be enjoying the landscape that was coming back to life all around him, no right to spring.

  The sun shone over Jimmy’s right shoulder as he jostled in front of his warrior. They were riding northwest, away from the settlements that had slowly been moving northwest themselves. It was getting hot.

  Jimmy saw his Aunt Rachel approaching, riding in front of a brave who kept his arm around her. When they were close enough, Jimmy’s warrior said something to Aunt Rachel’s warrior. While the two Comanches talked in their incomprehensible tongue, the nephew studied his aunt, who looked so strange dressed in nothing but a whalebone corset. The boy caught himself staring and looked away.

  “Jimmy, honey, you all right?” Aunt Rachel asked. “Did they hurt you, baby?”

  Even now, even here, the boy resented being called a baby. He was ten years old. He sat up straighter on the spotted horse.

  “I’m okay,” Jimmy called back. “How ’bout you?”

  “I’m—”

  The black-faced Comanche who held her put his hand over her mouth to make her be quiet. Jimmy wished he could help Aunt Rachel. He wished he could help Aunt Elizabeth, too. Most of all, he wished he could help his twin sister. But he couldn’t help any of them, especially Becky. Not now. Why had he ducked? He told himself that he couldn’t have known that by ducking he would murder his sister. But he had ducked! And she had been killed! He ought to have taken the lance into his own body. But he hadn’t. A big help he had been. So he didn’t deserve any help himself. He had it coming to him whatever they did. But what would they do?

  Soon the band of Comanches stopped riding long enough to transfer their prisoners to spare horses, so captives and captors no longer rode double. This change was made not as a favor to the prisoners but to spare the animals. The captives were bound to the horses to keep them from falling off or jumping off. A strip of rawhide was tied around one ankle, passed under the pony’s belly, then tied to the other ankle.

  Jimmy watched his Aunt Elizabeth riding completely nude a few feet away. The boy could see his aunt growing pinker and pinker in the bright sunshine. She looked frightened and uncomfortable and so womanly. The boy felt he shouldn’t be looking at his aunt this way, but he couldn’t help it. He just kept staring at the exposed feminine body that rode through the lush feminine countryside. He felt all the more guilty because his sister had been a woman—would have been a woman someday—which made all women seem somehow holier. More deserving of respect and honor. And here he was gawking at his very own aunt.

  Although the landscape looked soft, it was hard to cross. Jimmy began to ache in his skin, in his muscle, in his gristle. Even his own bones turned against him: they were sticks striking blows inside his body. He longed for the warriors to call a halt so he could stop riding and get down off the horse, and yet at the same time he feared a halt, for he was terrified of what would happen then. As much as he hated this ceaseless motion, this ceaseless hurt, he feared what would come next even more. And so he hoped the unbearable journey would never end.

  The trip was even harder in the afternoon when the sun shone in Jimmy’s face, turning his nose redder and redder. He saw Aunt Rachel’s arms and legs turning the color of fire. And Aunt Elizabeth was baked crimson all over. The sun was terrible, and yet it was better than sundown, for after sundown they would surely make camp, and then . . . He didn’t know what they would do, but he felt sure it would hurt. Even though he deserved to be hurt, he still stared at the sun to keep it up. Yet in spite of his stares and wishes and prayers, the sun kept sinking lower. He remembered the story—the one in his family’s only story book—about the day God made longer. But where was He now?

  The sun set.

  By the light of the full Comanche moon, the warriors rode on and on into the night. Now the great oak trees were black and no longer comforting. The whole night seemed painted in war paint. The bushes were blackened and even the hills wore black faces. Night was
a Comanche.

  Jimmy need not have been so worried about sundown because the Comanches pressed their journey deep into the night. As it got later and later, he began to worry that they were never going to stop—and at the same time to fear they would.

  When the Comanches finally did decide to make camp sometime after midnight, Jimmy was both thankful and terrified. Comanche hands untied the thongs around his ankles, pulled him from his pony, and threw him roughly to the ground. His aunts were thrown down next to him. Even the baby, little Billy, was tossed carelessly onto the bare ground.

  Jimmy saw corseted Aunt Rachel begin to crawl toward her son, who had started to cry, but she never reached him. The Comanches attacked her as if she were a buffalo to be skinned, knives drawn, slashing away. It appeared that the warriors were murdering Aunt Rachel, but they weren’t. They were simply solving the corset mystery the only way they knew how. The whalebone was too tough to tear, the fastenings too difficult to undo, so they “skinned” the young white woman out of her corset with sharp blades.

  Frightened by this skinning of one aunt, Jimmy sought comfort by trying to rush into the arms of the other, but she pushed him away.

  “No, don’t!” Aunt Elizabeth cried out. “Don’t touch me!”

  “What?” stammered Jimmy. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m sorry, honey. But I’m too sunburned.”

  Jimmy recoiled. He had hurt somebody else. First his sister and now his aunt.

  Hearing a great yelp go up from the warriors, Jimmy looked back in the direction of Aunt Rachel. He saw a brave holding the corset aloft as if it were a holy war trophy. Kneeling in the dirt, his aunt looked almost as if she still wore her corset, for she was pure white where her fancy underwear had protected her—and red everywhere else. Her alabaster torso glowed in the dark, as if the moon had come to earth in the shape of a woman’s body.

  The Comanches, having skinned Aunt Rachel, now descended upon them all. A brave grabbed Jimmy’s hands—with small fingers crossed—and pulled them behind his back. He looked and saw the others with their hands pulled behind them, too. The warriors used braided rawhide ropes to tie their wrists. The ropes were so tight his hands went numb. Would they die and fall off? And all the while Aunt Elizabeth kept crying out the loudest because she was sunburned the worst.

  “No! It hurts! It hurts!”

  A foot pushed Jimmy forward onto his face. He landed with a grunt. Then one by one the others fell, too. Aunt Rachel flopped onto the ground soiling her white breasts and stomach. Aunt Elizabeth struck the earth with a terrible scream. They all coughed in the dust.

  Jimmy felt his feet being pulled together, felt leather ropes circle his ankles. Then the rope around his feet was tied to the rope around his hands. He was bent backward like a bow. Completely helpless, he could only move his head. Looking around, he saw his aunts bound in the same manner, as defenseless as beetles turned on their backs. And on top of all the pain and guilt and humiliation and utter terror, Jimmy’s nose started to itch.

  While captive hands and feet turned blue in the bright moonlight, the Comanches started their victory dance. Over a hundred warriors pranced and leapt around a bonfire as their long shadows appeared to dance on top of the captives. The warriors screamed, making sounds that seemed half language and half wild animals calling to each other.

  Lying with his cheek against the cool ground, Jimmy stared un-comprehendingly at the frenzy, the blood lust. He was terrified and yet glad finally to have a moment to rest. He even closed his eyes only to open them again when he heard a particularly terrible war cry. Then a brave rushed in his direction, dropped to his knees, and shook an old familiar grey mop in his face.

  “Granddaddy!” Jimmy cried.

  “Hush!” warned Aunt Rachel.

  The boy started to cry as his grandfather’s bloody hair danced for him. Finally, the scalp was withdrawn, returning to take its place in the death dance around the fire. Then another mop of hair left the circle and advanced on the prostrate boy. It was red hair, long red hair like the knights of old used to wear, heartbreaking hair.

  “Ayyyyaaaayyyyy!”screamed a boy who had become an animal. The sound told of a pain older than language. The cry was older even than mankind. It was a cry to make both rabbits and wolves shiver all across the plains.

  When a warrior struck his Aunt Elizabeth across the back with his bow, Jimmy flinched as though he were the one who had been hit. Then another Comanche lashed his Aunt Rachel with a bow. Again, Jimmy’s body jerked. At last, a warrior approached him and he cringed. The bow whipped him across the legs, drawing blood. It had begun, what he had feared for so long, although he hadn’t known what it would be. He was finally being punished.

  More and more Comanches danced around the helpless captives, striking them with their bows, kicking them, hurting and humiliating them. Jimmy cried as if he were a baby. He couldn’t help it, and the baby Billy cried, too. Backs bled and legs bled and arms bled. Sunburned bodies were streaked a deeper red.

  When he thought he could stand it no longer, Jimmy was given a reprieve. The Comanches lost interest in the boy as their interest in the grown women increased. Aunt Elizabeth’s and Aunt Rachel’s ankles were freed, and they were pulled to their feet. With a combination of horror and curiosity, Jimmy stared up at his aunts’ sturdy pioneer breasts. The braves continued to beat the standing women.

  Then Jimmy saw a warrior approaching his aunts with a pair of burning sticks from the bonfire. The boy closed his eyes, but he couldn’t stop his ears. He heard the screams.

  When he opened his eyes again—it seemed a long time later—his aunts were on the ground. Two braves held Aunt Rachel’s feet spread wide while a third Comanche bounced on top of her. Four braves were needed to spread the legs of Aunt Elizabeth, who was more sunburned, in more pain, and fought harder.

  “No!” Aunt Elizabeth cried. “No, don’t! Please! It hurts! It hurts!”

  Jimmy felt he shouldn’t look, should close his eyes again, but he didn’t. Although it was horrible, he couldn’t help being interested. Growing up in a small cabin, he had become aware that adult men and women had some sort of secret, but he only knew enough to make him more curious. He knew there was something physical and forbidden. He even had some garbled idea about how it worked because an older cousin had told him that husbands peed inside their wives. But now these savages were giving him a practical lesson. So that was what men did to women. He was learning the arithmetic of reproduction, but the addition was set up all wrong. It should have been one plus one, but it was one plus fifty. Brave after brave mounted his aunts and rode them.

  Jimmy felt their hurt almost as if it were his own, felt their repulsion, felt their degradation. But most of all, he felt the utter terror of two young civilized women who were utterly at the mercy of the Stone Age. He told himself that all of his sympathy should be going out to his aunts, but he could not help holding some back for himself, because he knew he would never be able to dothat to a woman if they gelded him.

  75

  In the morning, Jimmy hated to wake up, hated the thought of beginning a new day of tortures and terrors. But he hated waking up most of all because he had been dreaming that his sister Becky was still alive. Her death had been a mistake. The lance had only just nicked her. She had lost a little blood, but she was fine. Until he woke up.

  Wishing he could go back to sleep, to his dreams, Jimmy awoke to a new horror. A brave tied one end of a braided rawhide rope around Aunt Elizabeth’s neck as if she were a cow, then tied the other end to the exaggerated horn of his Comanche saddle. Her riding days seemed to be over. From now on she would be led barefoot through a panorama of rocks and thorns. Another warrior tied Aunt Rachel in the same way, stringing another rawhide rope from her neck to his saddle horn, as if she were another trudging cow. The boy wondered what new game the Comanches planned to play with his aunts, who were still nude with their hands still bound behind their backs.

  When the yellow
Sun Chief approached him, Jimmy shuddered, but the bright Comanche did not harm him. He untied the boy’s hands, which was a relief, and then lifted him onto the back of a spotted pony. But once again, Jimmy’s ankles were tied to a rope that was passed beneath the animal’s belly.

  When they were ready to move out, the band of warriors divided, one group riding away from the sun, the other toward it. The westriding band, led by the short-haired Sun Chief, took with them Jimmy and Aunt Rachel and her baby. But the east-riding warriors led Aunt Elizabeth away with them. The dividing of the war party meant a dividing of the spoils of war.

  Looking back, Jimmy saw his Aunt Elizabeth being pulled toward the sunrise. At the end of her leather rope, she was forced to run naked, bruising her feet on the rocks, tearing her flesh on the clawing bushes. Not knowing what to do, Jimmy waved goodbye to his Aunt Elizabeth, who couldn’t wave back. She grew smaller and smaller. The boy kept on waving until his aunt disappeared over a hill, running naked into slavery.

  Looking for his other aunt, Jimmy saw her, still red and white, running at the end of a rope a few yards away. While she ran, Aunt Rachel kept her eyes focused on the warrior who carried her baby. She should have watched more carefully where she was going, for she stumbled and fell and was dragged by the neck behind the horse. She was being hanged horizontally.

  “Stoppit!” cried Jimmy. “You’re killing her! Aunt Rachel!”

  The woman seemed to be leaving the world the way she had come into it: pulled by forces beyond her control, helpless, headfirst, naked, and unbreathing.