News of the World: A Novel (15 page)

First he arranged for a reading space at the new mercantile building. It was very long and narrow, with glass cases full of knives, china shepherdesses, and silverware and handkerchiefs. On the walls were shelves of shirts and suspenders. Farther back were readymade shoes and boots, work jackets and bolts of cloth. The men’s and ladies’ underclothing were no doubt hidden below the counters. It would do. The man accepted his dollar in coins.

He put up the handbills everywhere and was followed by urchins in galluses and straw hats, some with shoes, up and down the dirt streets of Durand. The Captain said to leave him alone or he would twist their noses. He asked the tallest boy if he could read the bill.

I could if I wanted to, the boy said. But I don’t care to.

A man of independent thought, said the Captain. It says I am going to saw a woman in half tonight. A fat woman.

They hung back with dubious looks and he walked on.

He tacked his bills up at the livery stable, the school, the Feed and Provisions for Man and Beast, the wool warehouse, the post yard piled high with cedar posts, at the wagon maker’s, and at the leather repair. He handed one to a man in a black sack coat and a vest and a pair of modest side-button black shoes.
The man carried a gold-headed cane. He glanced down at the Captain’s riding boots. They were well-made and showed it.

Very good, the man said, and lifted his hat. He read the bill. News. We have so little of it. Are you come from Dallas?

I am.

And what are the conditions there with the Davis appointees?

Captain Kidd sensed danger but he had no choice but to plunge on. I have no idea, he said. I merely bought my newspapers, the latest come from the East.

So you will read from the
Daily State Journal
?

I will not. It is mere propaganda.

Sir!

It is opinion only. I refuse to be an unpaid mouthpiece for the powers in Austin. Captain Kidd could not make himself back down, it was not a thing for which he had any aptitude, nor had he ever, and it was far too late in life to change. He said, So understand this; I read of events. Events from places far removed so that, indeed, they have a fairy-tale quality about them and if you do not care for that sort of thing then stay home. He stood over the man at his full height, dignified in his threadbare duck coat and his disreputable traveling hat.

The man said, I am Dr. Beavis, Anthony Beavis, and I do not consider the
Daily State Journal
to be composed of fairy tales. It is in fact a valuable contribution to the current debates.

I didn’t say it was full of fairy tales, Doctor. Captain Kidd lifted his hat. If only it were. Good day to you, sir.

AT THE BROOM
and stave mill Johanna had busied herself with domestic chores. The man making brooms stared with narrow
eyes at the blankets strung on lines and the harnesses flung over the gunnels of the wagon and the black beans and bacon simmering on the tiny stove. He regarded the
Curative Waters
gold lettering and the bullet holes with serious doubt. He said that the girl had taken the horses out to graze along the banks of the Bosque.

There’s something wrong with that girl, he said.

And what would that be? said Captain Kidd. He sat on the tailgate with his stack of newspapers beside him and a flat carpenter’s pencil. He decided on different articles from the ones he had read in Dallas. Something more soothing. He had the AP sheets with news of floods along the Susquehanna and railroad bonds being passed in Illinois to fund the Burlington and Illinois Central. Surely no one could object to railroads per se. He had his
London Times
and the
New-York Evening Post,
the
Philadelphia Inquirer, Milwaukee Daily News
(the “Cheese and Norwegian Tatler” as Captain Kidd called it),
Harper’s Weekly.
He had
Blackwood’s,
and then of course
Household Words,
out of date but good for any time, any place. None of them mentioned Hamilton or Davis or Negro suffrage in Texas or the military occupation or the Peace Policy.

Captain Kidd hoped to get out of Durand with his finances refreshed and an unperforated skin. He had to. Johanna had no one else but himself. Nothing between her and this cross-grained contentious white man’s world that she would never understand. Captain Kidd looked up and enviously considered the chickens—so daft, so stupid, so uninformed.

Well, for one thing, she don’t speak English.

The man had a broom handle socketed into the hub of the
machine and he rotated it as he tied on wet bunches of broom corn. The fool sat there and did that all day long and probably considered himself an expert on the English language because it spilled out of his mouth like water from an undershot brain and he didn’t even have to think about it.

So?

Well. She looks English.

Do tell.

Captain Kidd drew thick lines around various articles in the
Inquirer.
Must be careful here. Philadelphia meant Quakers and Quakers meant the Peace Policy, which was getting people killed in North Texas and even down this far south of the Red. He chose a daintily written fluff piece about ice-skating on Lemon Hill, a spot apparently somewhere on the edge of Philadelphia.
Here, read and believe, they are building bonfires on this ice and ladies are skating about on it, their hoop skirts swaying. They are safe and life is quiet, the ice is firm and holds them up above the sinister and lethal depths.

Well, what is she, then?

The man’s face was broad and low, like a soup tureen. Hens pecked at his feet. Here Penelope, here Amelia, he said, in sweet inviting tones. He held down his hand and the hens pecked broom-corn seeds from it. Captain Kidd looked up in irritation. He was trying to care for a semi-savage girl child and fend off criminals who would kidnap her for the most dreadful purposes and at the same time make enough money in the only way he knew how so they might eat and travel and on top of that evade the brutal political clashes of Texans. A tall order.

Why don’t you just shut the hell up and tend to your brooms?
Kidd said. I haven’t asked you for your mother’s maiden name, have I?

Listen here, the man said.

Spare me, said the Captain.

He opened
Blackwood’s.
He closed his eyes briefly and asked for calm. Then from beyond the rail fence that enclosed one end of the stave mill yard he heard shouts and shrieks. He closed his eyes again. What now, what now. It was Johanna’s particular Kiowa high-pitched continuous stream of tonal words and a woman shouting in English. It came from the direction of the Bosque River. He threw down the carpenter’s pencil and grabbed a blanket, for he had some idea of what might be happening.

Johanna was in the shallows among the Carrizo cane, naked except for the tattered old corset and sagging drawers one of the ladies in Wichita Falls had given her. A woman with a wooden bucket in one hand was chasing her. They ran over the stones and shallow places, both of them spewing water. Johanna flung herself into a deep hole at the lip of a small rapids, screaming at the woman. Her wet hair was in dark ropes over her face and you could see the row of white bottom teeth as she yelled. She was calling down the dark magic of her guardian spirit upon the woman and if she had had the kitchen knife in her hand she would have stuck it in this good woman of Durand.

We cannot have this! the woman cried. She stood up to her knees in the current and her dress skirts billowed up with trapped air. She was young and properly attired and outraged. We cannot have naked bathing here! She jerked off her bonnet and beat it on her thigh in frustration. The big live oaks lifted
and sighed in exasperated sounds and from the town came the sound of choral singing—Wednesday, choir practice.

Ma’am, said Captain Kidd. He saw the wedding ring. Please. She was merely bathing.

In public! The young woman cried. Unclothed!

Not entirely, said Captain Kidd. He waded into the shallows of the Bosque, boots and all, and threw the blanket around the girl. Calm yourself, he said. She doesn’t know any better.

Across the river was the wagon yard, where the freighters camped, and several of the drivers had come to stand and watch and lean on their wagon boxes. Leaf shadows like laughter ran over their faces.

Captain Kidd said, She was a captive. An Indian captive.

We can’t have this, said the young woman. She held on to the rope bucket handle with both hands. I don’t care if she’s a Hottentot. I don’t care if she’s Lola Montez. She was parading her charms out there in the river like a Dallas huzzy.

Captain Kidd led Johanna out of the water. He said, I am returning her to her people by contract with the Indian Agent Samuel Hammond of Fort Sill. Official government business, Department of War.

Johanna sobbed and leaned against him, ankle deep in the green water of the Bosque. He said, Torn cruelly from her mother’s arms at the tender age of six, her mother brained before her eyes, starved and beaten, she has even forgotten her own language and the proper modesty of civilized peoples. Her sufferings were beyond description.

The young woman paused, then fell silent. Finally she said,
Well. But she must be corrected. She must have this forcefully impressed upon her. About modesty while bathing.

Johanna put her hands over her eyes. She could think only of her Kiowa mother, Three Spotted, her mother’s laughter and how they had all dunked each other in the clear water of Cache Creek in the Wichita Mountains, and screamed and fell backward straight into the water, and far up the mountainside a group of young men drummed for the fun of it. They had waded and splashed down the clear currents, four, five girls with strings of vermilion beads in their hair. She wept for them and for those mountains, a strange adult weeping with open hands and a bowed head. For all her terrible losses, which of a sudden had come back to her in a painful wounding rush.

Well, I am sorry to hear it, said the young woman. Her voice grew softer. And then after a moment she bent to Johanna and said, My dear, I am very sorry.

Leave her alone, said the Captain in a stiff voice. He lifted his hat to the young woman and took Johanna’s hand. And if you were to call yourself a Christian you would find shoes and clothing for this girl, to supply her on her journey.

They returned to the wagon, his boots full of water making squidging noises, Johanna a dripping wad of coarse blanket and wet drawers bunched in her hands, barefoot, hurt, angry, despairing.

BY EIGHT O
’
CLOCK
it was dark in Durand and he made sure she was bedded down in the wagon and in her nightgown and the
lantern lit. She hummed a slow and comforting song to herself and sat wrapped in the
jorongo,
for which she had developed a strong attachment, and took up the task of sewing up the frayed edge of the gray wool blanket. She had put his blood-spotted shirt to soak in salty water. The Captain went back to one of the stalls and pulled off his boots and spurs, changed into his reading clothes, put on the black lace-ups, and shaved.

Bekkin,
she looked up when he walked out.
Haina bekkin.

How very astute of you, he said. I am, in fact, going to bring home the bacon. He put his portfolio under his arm. I will astound the citizens with my informative readings concerning the Hottentots and Lola Montez and the Illinois railroads. They will pour out both silver and gold at my feet and we will have not only bekkin but eggs. How about that? First thing tomorrow we will patronize the local establishments.

He bent his head and regarded her with concern and some tenderness. It seemed his small warrior burst so easily into tears from time to time and was soon afterward bright with energy and laughter. So it was with children. May she always be so. He arranged his black ascot and shot his cuffs. She nodded and sewed and raised her dusty blond eyebrows a fraction as the gesture of a smile. Her freckles looked dark in the lantern light.

He would have liked to kiss her on the cheek but he had no idea if the Kiowas kissed one another or if so, did grandfathers kiss granddaughters. You never knew. Cultures were mine fields.

He patted the air with a gentle motion.

Sit. Stay.

FIFTEEN

T
HE MERCANTILE FILLED
up early. A U.S. Army soldier stood outside the door and required each man to open his coat and show he was not carrying a handgun. Some were. They were illegal but the sergeant said nothing, only gestured toward a bench. By the time the Mercantile was filled there were seven or eight revolvers and one little two-shot Sneaky Pete on the bench.

Men and some women sat in stiff-backed wooden chairs or stood leaning on the counters and were prevented from slouching against the glass cases by J. D. Allan, Proprietor. Captain Kidd did not stand searching the faces of the crowd but he saw them nonetheless at the edge of his vision. He laid out his newspapers and the AP wire sheets. He saw how they divided themselves, one group from another, and stared at each other with looks like warning flares. They sat and leaned and smoked, hatless among the articles of mechanical manufacture sent from far places. There were boots and shoes and suspenders and hair dye and buttons and ironstone plates from England. Kerosene lamps with green shades hung swaying from overhead chains and in the distance thunder came toward them with
threatening rumbles. The storm was coming from far beyond the hundredth meridian.

He began as always with his greetings to the establishment of the town and a brief comment on the roads. People always liked to hear about the condition of the roads from travelers. The Captain said the roads along the Red were all good, he did not know about the Little Wichita, he had crossed it more than a week ago but it might be up again. The Brazos ferry was not operating; washed away perhaps, but the landings on both sides were good. The road from the Brazos to here was in good condition. He paused and with one veined hand flattened his papers, waiting to hear if anyone would mention an altercation there involving firearms, but that was not what was on the minds of several of his listeners.