One of the warriors on the far side unsheathed a long weapon and lifted it. A lengthy barrel shone blue-white in a lightning flash. He aimed it and fired. A muzzle flash as long as a chimney brush and then the heavy bullet struck the stone near them and sent pieces of red sandstone flying. The report came to them as a dull chunk sound. They had not heard her; they didn’t know who she was. A warning shot; stay away.
The fiddler and the Captain fell flat, hands outstretched in the tall brown grasses.
That was a Sharps! shouted the fiddler.
The girl still called out, she had not moved. Then she bent to place the doll to sit against the rock, facing Indian Territory.
Fifty caliber, said the Captain. If he fired once he’ll fire again.
He jumped up and grabbed the ten-year-old girl by the back of her dress and swung her around and ran. He shifted his grasp to one of her arms, and the fiddler got the other arm and so they dragged her back to her fate. To the wagon, to the white man’s necessary world which did not seem to want her either. Another giant five-hundred-and-twenty-grain bullet tore through the air overhead. Even above the noise of the rain they heard the nyow-ow-ow sound and it hit a bur oak and tore off a limb big as a drainpipe.
At the Curative Waters wagon the Captain sat awake late in the rainy dark and counted his money and thought about the long series of roads to San Antonio and Castroville. The girl was asleep. He slowly changed his clothes. He hurt in all his joints. He reflected on how she had not cried once. His pipe and the tot of rum Doris and Simon had left for him were of some comfort. He needed it. He stewed silently at the imposition of it all. He must have been out of his mind. Senile dementia. But he had promised. I’ll do it, he thought. I will get her back to her relatives if I never cock another gun. He read through the Boston paper, staring mindlessly at advertisements for cures and false hair.
THEY CONTINUED ON to the south. He had forgotten to find a blacksmith for the cracked tire rim but the wheels had swollen in the wet and perhaps had seized it tight to the felloes. The trace chains jingled, the horses’ hooves kicked up little gouts of mud, the forested, hilly landscape slowly moved backward on either side. It was a mild day with white steam rising from the damp hollows. He would have to get the tire fixed in Dallas and his money was short. After he had paid the Masonic Hall and bought more supplies and grain for the horses, there was not much left.
Since they had left the town she now sat up beside him and sang to herself, one hand dancing in the air. With the resilience of a ten-year-old she had accepted that she could not cross the Red and rejoin her people and so she sang and made dancing gestures.
Well then, Johanna, he said. He had calmed himself. It was time to be patient. Auntie? Uncle? You will soon see them.
She stared straight ahead with the blank look that meant a dredging of the mind, a searching through old indexes.
He tried German. Tante Anna, he said. Onkle Vilhelm.
She turned to him. Ja, she said. There was surprise in her voice. Then she seemed to struggle with a tangled thing inside her head, something knotted that would not unknot.
She opened both stained hands on her lap and stared at the palms. She shut her fingers. She wasn’t really seeing anything. Her face was no longer a child’s face but one that had gone through something beyond description or comprehension and so was suspended for a moment in wordlessness. Her hands opened and shut, opened and shut.
And then she spoke. Mama, Papa. She lifted her head to him. Todt, she said.
They rolled through a bur oak forest with the steady click of the break in the iron tire counting out its revolutions; Fancy’s harness jingled. Crooked zigzag limbs sifted through the air. Beneath them the crisp shells of acorns made crushed sounds.
The Captain looked down at her, into her guileless eyes and the rediscovered pain in them. Sudden terrible memories. He bit the left side of his lower lip and was sorry he had brought it up. He tucked the blanket more tightly around her neck and smiled at her.
He said, Never mind, my dear. Let’s try an English lesson. She nodded gravely with one hand opening and shutting on a sleeve flounce.
Hand, he said. He held up his hand.
Hont, she said.
Horse. He pointed to Fancy jogging along ahead of them.
Hoas.
The Captain knew nothing of the Kiowa language but he knew it had no R.
Very good! he said in a cheerful tone.
Felly good.
But now her voice was low and discouraged. She had left the taina to keep watch across the Red River for her. That was taken care of. Now she had to begin a new, long, hard road to somewhere else. Felly good.
THEY CROSSED CLEAR Creek and then Denton Creek and two days later they came finally into the small town of Dallas about four o’clock of a chilly afternoon. The girl was even more subdued and frightened than in Spanish Fort, stunned by the noise and the wagons. There were several two-story buildings of brick and stone. She jumped back into the rear and pressed against the backrest of the wagon seat, between the flour keg and his carpetbag. They came in to town on the north road, where it led past several blacksmith shops with their great shed-roof caverns and lit with scarlet light, full of men and horses, tobacco smoke and the noise of metal being forced to hold the things of this world together bolt by bolt. Johanna glanced into them with deep apprehension. The Captain was happy to see them. He would bring the wagon in tomorrow. First, of course, he would have to ask the price of a new tire rim and the labor.
On into town, down Trinity Street, full of white men wearing their tight-fitting clothing and women in dresses that were architectural constructions of cloth and whalebone. Johanna gazed with some interest at two black women carrying shopping baskets with the heads of alarmed hens sticking out. Finally the Captain came into Gannet’s livery stable yard and there stepped down.
The stableman took hold of Fancy’s driving bridle and cried, Whoa there! As if the weary little roan were about to charge through the back end of the fairway.
Hang on to her there, said the Captain. She’s about to go completely wild on you.
Fancy hung her head and rolled her tongue under the straight bar of the driving bit and then yawned.
Never know, the man said. Unpredictable, new horse, never saw it before. He hiccupped.
Yes, said the Captain. You must only see new horses three or four times a day.
The man unhitched the little roan and took the harness from her back. The Captain could smell alcohol on the man’s breath.
Mrs. Gannet came out of the feed storage room with three empty flowered feed sacks in her hands. Her bonnet sat on the back of her head and the strings hung down over her shoulders. Still very trim, the Captain thought. Girlish waist.
Captain Kidd! she cried. She smiled and came to stand with one hand on the Curative Waters wagon’s side to see the girl staring out of the red wool with eyes like a carp. She turned to the Captain with an interrogative look. As he explained he stood at the high back wheel with one arm on it, taller than Mrs. Gannet by a head. Even as he told his story he wondered that she ran the livery stable by herself. He was worn and stained with Red River sludge and he had to go about buying newspapers in what he stood up in. No help for it.
San Antonio! said Mrs. Gannet. God above. That is very far, Captain. And you’ll be alone on the roads. There’s news of more raids all through the country. She turned to the stableman to see what he was doing. The Captain knew that raids were how she had become a widow. A year ago they had found Mr. Gannet in several pieces along the Weatherford road and none of them had any clothes on them. She said, Wait for a convoy, will you not?
Yes, yes, he said. We’ll see. It will be all right. He saw her dubious expression. I’m armed, he said. A sidearm and a shotgun. And now I have to go find the latest newspapers and a hotel. May I leave her with you for a few hours? I don’t think she’ll run away and go flitting about Dallas. In Spanish Fort there was someplace to go. The river. Here, sh
e’s deep inside enemy territory so to speak. He ran his blue-veined hand over a two-day growth of silver grizzle. I’m a mess, Mrs. Gannet.
She laughed and said for the Captain to go about his business, she could look after the girl. If he would care to change in the feed room she would send out his traveling clothes to Mrs. Carnahan and also she would ask Mrs. Carnahan if she had a secondhand dress to fit the girl and perhaps other necessary garments. The girl needed a change of clothing. He reached for his portfolio and looked down at her. Widowed, no more than forty-five. Painfully young. She had eyes of a leaf-colored hazel and a good smile.
I am very grateful, the Captain said. He lifted his hat to her, replaced it. I will settle up when we leave tomorrow.
He turned to Johanna and was surprised when her small hand appeared out of the jorongo and reached for his. She was very frightened and perhaps thought she was to be handed over to yet another stranger. He smiled and put his hand on her forehead, briefly, in lieu of patting her cheek, which was hidden behind the red wool.
It’s all right, he said. It’s all right.
He took out his hunting watch. Then he put it back. Johanna had no idea of time. It was pointless to tell her he would be back in an hour. So he just said,
Sit. Stay.
EIGHT
THE CAPTION CHANGED, left his traveling clothes with Mrs. Gannet, and went back out onto the street. He took his portfolio of newpapers under his arm and then engaged two rooms in a hotel on Stemmons Ferry Road; it was a balloon-frame building with thin walls and flowered grain sacks for curtains but he was as yet unsure how much money he would make from his reading. Baths were fifty cents, an outrageous price, but he paid it and sat for fifteen mnutes in the hot water and then shaved.
He found the proprietor of the Broadway Playhouse sitting in the Bluebonnet Saloon having an early drink and engaged the small theater for the night. He wrote it down and had the man sign it in case he got too drunk and forgot.
He went on down Trinity to Thurber’s News and Printing Establishment where he was greeted and seduced by the smell of ink and the noise of the press coming from the rear. It was a Chandler and Price hand-fed paten press, slowly chunking out page after page of announcements or advertising. All around were sticks of type and the bindery equipment, the perforating machine. A sign on the wall:
THIS IS A PRINTING OFFICE
CROSSROADS OF CIVILIZATION
Refuge of all the arts against the ravages of time
ARMOURY OF FEARLESS TRUTH
AGAINST WHISPERING RUMOR
INCESSANT TRUMPET OF TRADE
From this place words may fly abroad
NOT TO PERISH ON WAVES OF SOUND
NOT TO VARY WITH THE WRITER’S HAND
BUT FIXED IN TIME HAVING BEEN VERIFIED IN PROOF
Friend you stand on sacred ground
THIS IS A PRINTING OFFICE
The Captain took a deep breath to subdue the sudden bitter slash of envy and then felt more or less all right. Thurber greeted him and inquired after his health, his readings, his journeys, and the Indian threat from the north. Did he not find traveling onerous? The Captain fixed Thurber with his dark eyes and said no, he did not, and assured him that he, Jefferson Kyle Kidd, had not yet been forced to confine himself to a bath chair or an invalid’s bed and when he did he would notify Thurber with a postcard. Thank you, sir, for your concern.
The Captain stalked around the print shop and gazed at the layout tables and type cases. Thurber clasped his hands behind his back and rolled his eyes at his two printer’s devils. Then the Captain bought a sheet of letter paper and an envelope, and the latest editions of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Chicago Tribune, the London Times, the New-York Herald, and El Clarion, a Mexico City newspaper. He would sit at peace in the hotel room, under a proper roof, and find articles of interest in the English-language papers and then translate some articles from El Clarion.
Then he went down Trinity to the Dallas Weekly Courier offices, much refreshed from having snarled at Thurber, to sit with their Morse operator and take news from the AP wire. The fee was reasonable. The wire from Arkansas and points east was still operating. The Comanche and Kiowa had learned to cut the wire and then repair it with horsehair so that it would not transmit but no one could tell where it had been cut. They well knew Army orders came over the telegraph wires.
He took out the thick sheaf of printed notices and handbills from his portfolio and, there in the Courier offices, inked in the last line.
THE
LATEST NEWS AND ARTICLES
FROM THE MAJOR JOURNALS OF THE CIVILIZED WORLD
CAPTAIN JEFFERSON KYLE KIDD
WILL READ A COMPENDIUM
FROM SELECTED NEWSPAPERS AT 8:00 P.M.
AT THE BROADWAY PLAYHOUSE
He walked around the streets of Dallas tacking up his notices as he went. These small towns in North Texas were always hungry for news and for a presenter to read it. It was so much more entertaining than sitting at home reading the papers, having only yourself or your spouse to whom you could make noises of outrage or astonishment. Then, of course, there were those who could not read at all or only haltingly.
He worried all up and down every street and with every tack he drove in. Worried about the very long journey ahead, about his ability to keep the girl from harm. He thought, resentfully, I raised my girls. I already did that. At the age he had attained with his life span short before him he had begun to look upon the human world with the indifference of a condemned man. Who cares for your fashions and your wars and your causes? I will shortly be gone and I have seen many fashions come and go and many causes so passionately defended only to be forgotten. But now it was different and he was drawn back into the stream of being because there was once again a life in his hands. Things mattered. The strange depression and spiritual chill he had felt back in Wichita Falls was gone. But still he objected. He was an old man. A cranky old man. I raised two of them already. A celestial voice said, Well then, do it again. The Captain had to admit that this was his own inner voice, which always sounded something like that of his father, the magistrate, who had often recalled to his son the law under the Crown, in Colonial North Carolina, his voice speculative and gentle and lightly agreeable with drink.
THE COOL SPRING wind skipped from roof to roof and dived down into the streets and flung women’s hems up in rolling loops. The Captain could see his breath. He pulled the tattered muffler close around his throat and shoved his good black hat down over his white hair. Texas weather was changeable as the moon. He bought barbecue and bread and a dish of sodden, unhappy-looking squash and carried it all back to the livery stable stacked in a tin pail.
Kep-dun! He heard her voice in a loud happy cry.
Yes, Johanna, he said.
Mrs. Gannet looked over the edge of a box stall with her bright hazel eyes and wide smile. He could just see the top of Johanna’s head. Mrs. Gannet told him all was well, that the girl took some comfort in the horses, and that they were learning all their names. The Captain found this a relief. His new-washed traveling trousers and two old shirts had been hung to dry over the wagon’s dashboard and his socks and unmentionables discreetly steamed, still hot from the tub, on the tie-rods beneath. The girl’s new secondhand clothing had been packed in the ammunition box.
He opened the dinner pail on the lowered tailgate. Mrs. Gannet went back into her office. The Captain watched her go. A strand of her dark brown hair had fallen from the confines of her bonnet and her dress skirt moved very nicely without hoops.
Then he turned to Johanna.
Dinner, he said, carefully.
Dinnah! The girl smiled and showed all her row of bottom teeth and gathered up her skirts to climb a wheel by the spokes into the wagon.
He and Johanna sat on the side seats and he watched as she took the camp butcher knife to cut off a great piece of the smoking barbecued meat, tossed it from hand to hand crying Ah! Ah! and when it was cool tossed it expertly into he
r mouth. Barbecue sauce flew. The Captain paused with his fork halfway to his mouth and watched her. She cut another piece and began tossing it; her fingers were slick with fat and there was red barbecue sauce up to her wrists.
Stop.
He put down his fork and wiped her hands with the napkins that had come with the dinner and placed the fork in her hands. He grasped her small fingers, fork and all, in his bony and veined hand and pushed the tines into the brisket and then lifted it to her mouth.
She regarded him with that flat and vitreous stare that meant, he had learned, that she neither understood nor liked what she was seeing. She took the fork as one would grasp an ice pick and stabbed it into her dinner. She wrenched a piece loose and ate it from the tines.
No, my dear, he said. He put his hand over hers, once again placed the fork correctly, and once again lifted it to her mouth. Then he sat on his own side of the wagon and saw her struggling with the fork, the knife, the stupidity of it, the unknown reasons that human beings would approach food in this manner, reasons incomprehensible, inexplicable, for which they had no common language. She tried again, and then turned and threw the fork into a box stall.
The Captain’s shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch under his black formal coat. He was suddenly almost overwhelmed with pity for her. Torn from her parents, adopted by a strange culture, given new parents, then sold for a few blankets and some old silverware, now sent to stranger after stranger, crushed into peculiar clothing, surrounded by people of an unknown language and an unknown culture, only ten years old, and now she could not even eat her food without having to use outlandish instruments.
Finally he took his satchel in one hand, tucked his portfolio under his arm, and beckoned to Johanna. He saw her look down at her stained hands and there were tears on her cheeks.
We’re going to try to get you into a hotel room, he said in a firm voice. And you are going to have to stay there without breaking out the windows while I prepare my reading.
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