News of the World(13)

There was a great barn on the far edge of town that served as a place to park but it was full of every imaginable four-wheeled conveyance. Not far away was the U.S. Cavalry encampment, so he drove into a tight grove of bur oaks beyond the edge of the town. There he put up the overhead canopy and then one of the side curtains, and the other side curtain he stretched out as an awning over the tailgate. He belled Fancy and then hobbled both her and Pasha and set them loose to graze. He stood for a moment to watch Pasha, with his thick, curved neck and large eyes. He was both smooth and calm. He remembered seeing the horse in a lot of twenty to be sold in Dallas. He had instantly turned away because if the dealer had seen the look on his face the price would have gone up a hundred dollars.

Finally the Captain went to heave out the flour keg. He took out the box of .38 shells and put it under the seat.

Everything good, he said to Johanna. He beat the flour from his hands. Here, my dear, do something. Try to get this stove going.

Yes, Kep-dun, yes yes.

She darted under the oaks, still barefoot, to gather firewood. Lightning cracked overhead with a noise like artillery while its blinding neurons of fire ran to every quarter of the sky. Spanish Fort was busy with freight wagons and supply establishments, with longhorn herds milling outside the town waiting to cross and anxious men conferring under canvas as to when the flood would subside. Trying to figure out how to get them over the Red before they ate up all the grass on this side of the river and starved.





SIX

CAPTAIN KIDD LEFT her feeding sticks into the toylike cast-iron stove and walked back into town grasping his hat brim. He found the man who took care of the Masonic Lodge and arranged to rent it that night. Then he walked about town to put up his bills. If he did not have the girl to care for he would not have to stay at the wagon, he could rent a room with a kerosene lamp and curtains and take a bath and he could eat in a restaurant. God above knew what she would do if presented with a dinner on a plate. In the light mist he tacked up each notice with four tacks. He had learned long ago that anything less left his advertisements prey to the wind and they invariably ended up in the hands of people who needed the paper to write grocery lists on, or for other purposes.

He came upon a fiddler he knew. Simon Boudlin sat behind the glass window of a storefront that was both a ladies’ millinery and a meat market. Simon sat in the window with his chin on his fist and his fiddle under one arm as if he were a display. He was watching the world go by. He was a short man but he carried himself as if he were six feet tall; he had straight, broad, and perfectly square shoulders and slim hips. His thick hair was a halo of unruly brown burrs, and he was freckled as a guinea egg. Simon lifted his fiddle bow by the frog and tapped on the glass. Captain Kidd saw him and went in.

Simon.

Captain.

Are you playing tonight? Because I am reading.

Where?

At the Masonic Lodge.

The Captain joined Simon in the window on another chair and laid his tack hammer and the sheaf of advertisements on the floor. He wiped off his old field hat with his sleeve.

No, it’s all right, said Simon. I have already played. No competition. He smiled. He had two teeth broken out of his jaw on the left side but you couldn’t see it unless he smiled and then deep parentheses formed on either side of his mouth. He worked sometimes for the wheelwright and a wheel had come off the lathe where they were boring out the hub box and struck him in the jaw. Why are you here? He was not talkative until he had something to say. He was a careful listener and cocked his head like a titmouse, which he did now. Raindrops slid and sparkled on the glass and beyond it people wavered past with their heads down.

I am on my way to Dallas and then on south, said the Captain. Coming from Wichita Falls.

You got across the Little Wichita, then.

Yes, and I think so did Britt Johnson and his crew. They went straight south. So you have nothing to do?

Simon shook his head. I just played for the Fort Worth Dancing School master. They had the dancing school in the back, here. He pointed with the bow. The fellow who was supposed to play guitar for them was tuning his guitar there at the church on the piano and he got it an octave too high and busted every one of his strings. Simon bent his head down and laughed. Bang bang bang one after the other, you’d think he would have figured it out. He wiped his hand down his face to stop himself from laughing at the guitar player’s misfortunes. Well, well, I did it myself once, long ago. And so! They came and got me out of the wheelwright’s to play for them. You see. He plucked a curled shaving from his pants leg.

Well then, listen. Captain Kidd shifted from one foot to another and briefly wondered if Johanna might have already absconded into the woods. He regarded his boots. His pants. Mud to the shins. Several women were buying ground meat, a man churned it out of a big-spouted grinder in a red sludge. On the other side of the store a girl and her friend were trying on hats. From the rear of the store came the light voices of yet more girls and the sound of several young men whose voices were very low and at other times broke and vaulted up the register. They came filing out carrying their dancing slippers. The Captain lifted his hat to them. Listen, he said. He groped around in his head for sentences and phrases and words to explain the situation.

I’m listening, I’m listening, said the fiddler. He lightly tapped the head of the bow on the floor between his feet. Some song was running through his head.

The thing is, I am returning a girl who was a Kiowa captive to her people, down south near San Antonio, and she’s in the wagon there, in that bur oak stand behind the livery barn, cooking dinner in my wagon.