News of the World(49)

They would come back in two years. Dearest Papa you know we long for Texas but . . . She wrote of the long journey and of their weariness, of Olympia’s delicacy. They were lacking money and would need to buy horses and who knew how they would now get across the Mississippi? If he had money to send them for the trip, they needed it. Would it be possible to rent the old Betancort house? They were, after all, Mama’s people. She had written already to Sr. De Lara concerning the Mission Concepción land.

Newspaper readings would not be well attended here or any big city to the south and east. All the larger cities of Texas had a daily distribution of newspapers fresh from the coast. They came in on the boats at Galveston and Indianola and others came down on the train from St. Louis. Strange to think of children being kidnapped by the Comanche and Kiowa, of attacks by raiding parties, while the telegraph and the steam locomotives marched out of the maw of Progress but so it was. His readings were popular only in small towns in the north and west, like Dallas and Fort McKavett, places near the frontier.

So he bought a new set of newspapers from the Southern cities, the Memphis Daily Appeal, the Columbus, Georgia, Bugle, along with those from cities in the northeast. He returned to The Vance House and sat up late with his newspapers and smoked and paced the room. He could not sleep. Finally he went down to the lobby and sent a boy out for a pint of whiskey from Milligans. You could trust their whiskey. He loved this town and its river. It was very old. He looked out at the oil-burning streetlamp through the glass of whiskey to see it shiver in tones of gold and brass. And so am I, he thought. But I am not a cripple and I am not stupid.


THE NEXT MORNING he drove down the Castroville Road with Pasha tied on behind as always. He did not know what to tell himself except that perhaps Anna and Wilhelm just needed the right kind of information or the ability to imagine what it was like for a child taken captive and then redeemed and then adopted by virtual strangers, yes adopted, you miserly coldhearted beasts. He would try. Reason, bribery, whatever it took.

Then he would go on north.

It was night by the time he had reached D’Hanis. He turned down the Leonberger farm road and thought that perhaps by this time they would be happy to get rid of her. Maybe not. He had no idea one way or the other. He doubted if they could make her work. Perhaps with severe beatings.

As he came toward the farm he stopped by a grove of mesquite trees. He could see a light shining in the farmhouse window. He sat quietly for a while with his knuckles under his nose, thinking.

Then he saw Johanna alone in the flat, grassy field. She had several heavy leather halters over her shoulder and walked clumsily because of a bucket she held in both hands. They had sent her out into the field alone, after dark, to get the horses. She trudged through the April grass. She was calling to the horses in Kiowa, softly, secretly. She was staggering on the uneven ground, under the weight of the halters and a wooden bucket of shelled corn and her ragged taffy hair flew in strands around her shoulders. She was only ten, sent out into the dark with twenty pounds of halters and corn and the heavy wooden bucket. Into a landscape she did not know.

He stood up. He called to her. Johanna, he said.

She turned. She stopped and stared at the wagon and at Pasha and himself on the seat. The tall grasses hissed around her skirt hems, the same dress; they had not even offered the girl a bath and a change of clothes.

Kep-dun! A low cry. She turned toward him and paused and then came staggering closer. Oh, Pasha want to eat! Allite? She held out a handful of corn. I giff Pasha, allite? It was the only ploy she could think of to make Kontah stop, to make herself welcome, wanted.

He saw dark red stripes across her forearms and hands. It was from the dog whip. The anger that overtook him nearly froze him in place. It almost shut him down. Then he said, calmly, Let’s go. It’s all right. Let’s just go. Drop that goddamn bucket.

He wrapped the reins around the driver’s post and stepped down. She dropped the bucket and came running. She grabbed hold of the top rail of the fence and vaulted over it into the road. Her skirts swung up in a flying fan and she landed on her feet.

Kontah, she said. Grandfather. I go with you. She began to cry. I go with you.

Yes, he said. He put his arm around her and then took the halters and hurled them out into the dirt of the road. The Captain turned the Curative Waters wagon back toward the north. He said, And if anybody objects we will shoot them full of ten-cent pieces.





TWENTY-TWO

HE AND JOHANNA drove north again from San Antonio to Wichita Falls and Bowie and Fort Belknap. They traveled sometimes in convoy with the freighters or the Army. He was the man who read the news and she the little captive girl whom he had rescued and who it was said had crept up Indianwise on the depraved animal named Almay as he lay in his hoggish den and before the Captain could restrain her had beaten him to death with a bag of quarters. But look at her now, she has cleaned up quite nicely, uses soap, wears shoes, keeps the Captain’s money. They could be seen in wintertime eating houses at a back table as she bent over her book, printing out her letters with a carpenter’s pencil on the reverse of one of the Captain’s handbills as he patiently guided her hand; A is for Apple, you see my dear, and B is for Boy. When they passed through Dallas the Captain found that Mrs. Gannet had taken up with a man much younger than the Captain, a man only sixty-two, who wore thick glasses and had a waist size of at least forty-four but he lived in Dallas and would stay in Dallas and not go wandering.