News of the World(22)

For Britt. A freed black man. That’s why.

In the next room, something broke. More quiet tones from Mrs. Gannet, the unflappable.

No use trying to write anymore.

Your affectionate father, Jefferson Kyle Kidd.

He heard the loud objections in Kiowa as the girl was dragged down the hall to the bathing facilities. One cannot think with a ten-year-old Kiowa-German captive throwing soap and ceramics. After a while they came back and there was more sobbing. Then Mrs. Gannet began to sing.

He bent his head and listened. She had a good voice, a clear light soprano. She sang “Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross” and then “It Is Well with My Soul.” He slowly shifted the letter paper and began to fold it. When peace like a river attendeth my way . . . very good. At age seventy-one he deserved peace like a river but apparently he wasn’t going to get it at present. The town of Dallas beyond the window raised up its new raw-lumber buildings and the air was woven with crashing wheel noises and shouts of the men at the ferry landing. What must the girl think of these man-made bluffs and rigidly straight byways? The sobbing died down. Mrs. Gannet sang “Black Is the Color.” Not an easy song to sing unaccompanied. An old folk song in the Dorian mode. The girl was listening. It was much closer to the Indian way of singing. The unexpected turns and strange Celtic intervals. He wondered why he had not in the past year offered his attentions to Mrs. Gannet and then he knew why. Because his daughters felt he should remain forever loyal to the memory of their mother and if they found out about it Olympia and Elizabeth would have had a galvanized tin hissy, one apiece.

At last it was quiet on the other side of the deal board wall. He turned down the kerosene lamp. Nearly eight. Showtime.





TEN

A LOW TRAVELING TIDE of gleaming white clouds told of more rain to come. There was good seating at the Broadway. That meant people were more comfortable and would therefore be patient and listen longer. The Captain brought his own bull’s-eye lantern as always. He set it on a plant stand to his left, opposite to that of right-handed readers, and trained the light on the dense gray print. He laid down his small gold hunting watch at the top of the podium. At the front double doors two U.S. Army men were stationed, as there were whenever there was a public meeting at any time. Texas was still under military rule.

This might end in a few months if Washington would seat the Texas delegation. The recent election for Texas governor had not been between the old Southern Democrats and the Union-loyal Republicans. No indeed. The old Southern Democratic party was finished in Texas. The fighting was between two factions within the Republicans. The one led by Davis was extreme in its demand for dictatorial powers. The one led by Hamilton, not so much. Both were robbing the state blind. There was no point in appealing to one’s congressman to help clear up land titles in the state. They were too busy lining their pockets. Clearing the Betancort land title would take up Elizabeth’s time for years. She would enjoy it very much.

There was a good crowd and he heard the coins ringing into his paint can at the entrance. He greeted the crowd as always, with a statement of thanks to the proprietor of the Broadway, a comment on the state of the roads from Wichita Falls to Spanish Fort and then here. Then he shook out the London Times. It was in this way he asked people to enter another realm of the mind. Places far away and mysterious, brought to them by details which they did not understand but which entranced them.

He read of the attempt by the British Colonial government to enumerate the peoples under their rule, a census, in short, and the rebellion of the Hindu tribes against the census takers because married women were not permitted to say aloud the names of their husbands. (Nods; they are all beyond rational thought in those far countries.) He read about a great windstorm in London that toppled chimney pots (What is a chimney pot? He could see it on their faces.) and then of the new packing plants in Chicago which would take any amount of cattle if they could only get them. In the crowd were men who were contemplating driving cattle all the way to Missouri if they could evade the savage tribes and they listened with deep interest. The Captain read of the Irish pouring into New York City, ragged crowds unloaded from the passenger steamer Aurora, of the railroad driving into the plains of the new state of Nebraska, of another eruption of Popocatépetl near Mexico City. Anything but Texas politics.

Someone called, Why are you not reading from Governor Davis’s state journal?

The Captain folded his newspapers. He said, Sir, you know very well why. He leaned forward over the podium. His white hair shone, his gold-rim glasses winked in the bull’s-eye lantern beam. He was the image of elderly wisdom and reason. Because there would be a fistfight here within moments, if not shooting. Men have lost the ability to discuss any political event in Texas in a reasonable manner. There is no debate, only force. In point of fact, regard the soldiers beyond the door.

He slapped his newspapers into the portfolio. He said, I am an aggregator of news from distant places, and as for the Austin paper and the Herald, you can read them for yourselves. The Captain shut the flap on his portfolio and buckled it tight. And fight among yourselves on your own time and not during my reading.

He heard hear, hear! from among the wet and shining heads of the men who held their hats in their hands and from some of the women in their pancake hats and their bonnets.

He blew out the bull’s-eye lantern and took it and the portfolio and stepped down from the stage. Among the crowd filtering out he saw, with a dropping feeling, the pale-haired man and the two Caddos he had last seen in Wichita Falls and perhaps Spanish Fort. He knew the Indians were Caddos because of their blunt-cut hair, sliced off just at the jawline, their shirts of a dark blue with a tiny print of yellow flowers. The Caddos liked printed calico. The blond man sat relaxed in a theater chair with an ankle cocked up on the other leg and his hat on the point of his knee. He was watching the Captain.