News of the World: A Novel (8 page)

Johanna called again.
I have been taken prisoner, rescue me, take me back.
She would turn her back on the modern world with the telegraph and the railroads and its elaborate political constructions piled layer upon layer. Everything gone . . . everything. And she would live in constant movement over the face of the earth, in gratitude to the sun and the grass, often dirty and lousy and wet and cold like those on the other side but she did not care.

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, she’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

T
HE 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

C
ROSSROADS 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.