News of the World(31)
Yes, tlee, tlee.
He pointed out: Pine. Oak. Cedar. First the general class and then the specific.
Yes, Kep-den Kidd.
As they drove, he pointed back to Pasha, to his nose, to the bacon. She seemed to have had some acquaintance with the English language before. Maybe her memory just needed a jog. She said, Hoas, nos-ah, bekkin. Then he rose to his feet. Stend up, she said. He sat down. Sit don. Kontah, sit don.
Captain Kidd was fairly sure Kontah meant grandfather but whether this was an honorific or a slang term he had no way of knowing.
He said, Kontah, Opa.
Yes yes, Kontah Opa!
Opa, German for grandfather. Well, they were getting somewhere. The word Opa clicked into some otherwise disengaged gear in her mind. Then she became interested in the puzzle of another language, other words, other grammars. She thought for a moment and then said, Cho-henna clepp honts. She clapped her hands. Cho-henna laff-a. She came out with a hearty false laugh, bouncing around on the wagon seat. Then she held up her hands with the fingers spread. Wan, doo, tlee, foh, fife, siss, sefen, ate-ah, nine-ah, den.
The mouse ran up the clock, he said, and when he saw the dubious look on her face, her anxious need to understand, he patted her hand. It is all right, he said.
Allite.
She could not pronounce either the German R nor the English R or one of the two th sounds and perhaps never would. Lain, she said. Watah, plenty good much watah, plenty lain.
Excellent, Johanna! Excellent.
Hmmm hmmm hmmm, she hummed to herself and rocked back and forth and then busied herself with tearing off the remains of the lace edging on her dress. She had begun it when she tied up her braid during the fight on the Brazos and had decided to finish the job.
As long as they were traveling she was content and happy and the world held great interest for her but Captain Kidd wondered what would happen when she found she was never to wander over the face of the earth again, when she was to be confined forever to her Leonberger relatives in a square house that could not be broken down and packed on a travois. He had a failing feeling around his heart when he thought of it. Cynthia Parker had starved herself to death when she was returned to her white relatives. So had Temple Friend. Other returned captives had become alcoholics, solitaries, strange people. They were all odd, the returned captives. All peculiar with minds oddly formed, never quite one thing or another. As Doris had said back in Spanish Fort, all those captured as children and returned were restless and hungry for some spiritual solace, abandoned by two cultures, dark shooting stars lost in the outer heavens.
And could he abandon her now to her relatives, after they had saved each other’s lives, after the battle they had fought? He had to. They were her blood kin. This was a painful thought but he had had enough of anxiety for a good long while and so he turned his mind back to the here and now.
In Durand he would have to give a reading of the latest news since they had shot up nearly all their money. The Captain’s previous funds had been destroyed by the War Between the States and several minor debts in property taxes, but minor or not they were debts and by 1866 his deposits and bank stocks were all gone. The local San Antonio Commission for the Support of the Confederacy had threatened him with jail if he would not invest in Confederate bonds and so there it all went. He sold his printing business and paid his debts and took to the road. Maria had died the year before, and it was as if some tether had been loosed, the anchor rope of a hot-air balloon cut free and the Captain rose up and sailed away on the winds of chance. He was nearly seventy-two now and his finest possessions were his gold hunting watch and Pasha and his reading voice.
Cho-henna estomp choo! She lifted her bare foot and pointed to it and then stamped it on the floorboards.
Not shoe, foot, he said. He reached back and found one of her shoes. He held it up; a black and confining laced thing with a blunt toe and a one-inch heel. The laces were missing. She had used them for something. Shoe, he said. He pointed to her foot. Foot!
Fery well, Cho-henna stomp foot! Cho-henna weff hont! She waved her hand. Kep-dun stend up! He stood up. Kep-dun sit don! He sat down. Kep-dun clepp honts! He wearily clapped his hands. Kep-dun laff!
No, he said.
Ah ah ah, Kep-dun, pliss!
All right. He managed to raise a false and hearty laugh. Ha! Ha! Ha! Now, that’s enough for today.
This made her fall into helpless laughter. Then she cried, Kep-dun heat blek-fass, Cho-henna choot gun (shooting noise), hoas tlot, Kep-dun choot gun (shooting noise again), Wan, doo, tlee, foh, fife, siss, sefen, ate-ah, nine-ah, den.
Very good, my dear, now let’s be quiet. I am elderly and frail and my nerves fray easily. His scalp still had the running galvanized crawl of pain and his right eyebrow probably needed stitches but was not going to get them.
Fery good lain, hoas choot gun ha ha ha! Hoas eat blek-fass! Hoas laff! (Here an imitation whinny) and she klepped her honts and laughed again and so they went on down the Lampasas Road through the trees, toward Durand on the Bosque River, with the Kiowa captive girl inventing new and even more improbable sentences and the Captain’s eyes watering with pain.
Wan foot, doo foots, wan hont, doo honts, doo hoas, big hoas, lidda hoas . . .
Johanna, shut up.
Cho-henna chut up!
As they came within a mile of Durand through the dripping forest of live oaks he saw men riding toward him. He put one hand out to Johanna. She stopped. She became perfectly silent. The men who rode toward them wore ragged clothing and shabby hats but they were well-armed. They had spent all their money on revolvers and the new repeating short-barreled carbines. Spencers, gleaming new.