News of the World(34)
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 He had Blackwood’s, and then of course Household Words, out of date but good for any time, any place.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.