Woman of Light (19)
“Papa,” she said, in agony.
He pushed his daughter away from his light skin, and in the haste of parting said, “Be a good girl, my baby, my little light.”
* * *
—
Luz would look back on that day with a certain amount of shame. Even then, at eight years old, she felt foolish not to sense what came next—the long winter without adequate food, the blizzard nights when the hearth inside the company cabin grew ice, and those terrible and more terrible things her mother was forced to endure in that mining camp of men. But how could she have foreseen that her father, Benny Alphonse Dumont, would abandon his family so calmly it was as if he were tossing out a pair of heavily worn boots? And, more important, how was Luz to know, at such a young age, that everything, good or bad, is eventually taken away?
EIGHT
The Inner Self
The Lost Territory, 1892
Pidre settled in a town named Animas, the inner self, the soul. It was seated against the railroad and a wide river that flowed down from the San Juan Mountains near the emergence point, where his people had crawled out of the earth at the beginning of time. He took jobs in saloons, swept out horse stables, kept his money under a horsehair mattress in his boarding room. It was demanding work, but for every cent made, Pidre knew he could turn it into ten more.
The town was different from the village. The train’s steam rolled through the sky like a hovering ghost, coating everything in its wake in dark soot. French, Spanish, Diné, Apache, any kind of man you could dream of frequented the town. Pidre walked the muddy and bustling streets with a sense of reverence and determination. He tipped his beaver cap to other Indios in European garments, the freedmen in elegant suits. He savored baked goods made by women from lands as far away as Greece and Italy. At lunch counters, his tin pail in hand, he smiled and waved and compared the shape of his eyes to those from the East, the Chinese rail workers, the Japanese farmers. As it was in Pardona, citizens of Animas enjoyed his optimism, his undying work ethic, his childlike wonder at the simplest acts of beauty, a bursting sunset, peeling a grapefruit from the coasts of Califas. But Animas could be an ugly place, too, where those deemed criminal were strung up in the town plaza, death by hanging, a distinct American bloodlust.
After three years in the town, Pidre had saved enough for an investment. He considered his options delicately. Many of his compadres had wasted their earnings on silver claims that ran dry in a matter of months. He could put down a payment on a hotel, a small cattle ranch, a brothel perhaps, or maybe a saloon. One morning as Pidre paced the slim walkways of his boardinghouse, considering his many options, his hands wringing at his center, an Irish miner and fellow boarder named Michael “Mickey” Garrett stopped him before the staircase. Mickey was wearing new boots that he claimed were made of ostrich. They were purple with black dots and raised spikes. He stood before Pidre on the middle step, lifted his right foot, and said, “Take a look. Bet they taste like chicken.”
Pidre contemplated the boots for several seconds. He said, “Very pretty, Mickey.”
Mickey lumbered to the top of the stairs and stood before the narrow windows overlooking Main Street. He gripped Pidre’s forearm, guiding him to the eastern view. Men exited brothels and saloons with sore eyes. They held their hands to their foreheads and stumbled toward their horses and boardinghouses. The sun glistened over the mud streets and brick buildings, making the town appear, if only for a few short minutes, pristine. “Do you want to know where I got ’em?”
“No, not particularly,” said Pidre.
Mickey laughed. He had a ruddy nose and a dirty beard.
Pidre reached out and smoothed his friend’s neck. “Put some salve in it. The ladies will appreciate that.”
“Haven’t seen a proper woman since I left Dublin.” Mickey’s bluish eyes widened and he pointed toward Fourth Avenue. “That man there,” he said, “the one with the cane. He sold me the boots.”
A slim man in a French top hat walked the street in languorous strides. He held a decorative silver-capped cane in his left hand, though he barely tapped the ground as he moved. He didn’t stop every few steps to nod and offer morning remarks to shopkeepers or passersby. He simply went forward as if he knew no one and didn’t want to. The man seemed interesting, notable even. “Why should I care?” Pidre said.
“Because,” said Mickey, “he’s got something you’d like to see.”
* * *
—
At week’s end Mickey and Pidre rode on horseback to the farthest corner of town to a section that wasn’t incorporated into Animas. It was a no-man’s-land, dropped into the Lost Territory, marked by no imaginary or geographic borders. It was nearing nightfall. They approached a wooden cabin beside a bend in the river that was so wide and deep it appeared as a dim blue lake. It was early autumn. The aspens were ablaze. The men walked in their boots, sounds of cacti crunching beneath their feet until the noises deadened at the red sandstone walls of the canyon. They entered the cabin with their hats in their hands and their pistols in their sleeves.
His name was Otto Fitzpatrick and he sat before the fireplace in a rocking chair, a spittoon at his feet, his silver hair in strings around his cavernous face. Had they not known who he was, they would have assumed he was a wild man who lived off the land and ate mostly crows and squirrels. But Otto Fitzpatrick, a trader, had recently come by rail from New York City and brought with him trunks of the latest Parisian men’s fashions, electric lamps, anthropology books on the Native peoples of the American West, good liquor, and trading cards. The cabin was an emporium open only by invite. Pidre hadn’t encountered a trader like him before. Mickey had told him that Otto Fitzpatrick came from a family of Wall Street investors and vast landowners of the American South. “It’s a game to him,” Mickey had said on the wagon ride over. “He’s a competitive son of a gun.”