News of the World: A Novel (10 page)

. . . but at present we do well without sidearms and there is no legal constriction against smoothbores and so from time to time I enjoy a supper of Quail and Duck. The trumpeters and the whooping cranes are coming back and settle on the Red in their passage. Now my dearest ones enough Gossip, I must come to the important part of my Relations to you which is that I consider you would all do well here in Texas rather than in the Ruined and Devastated States in the East and please consider the land owing to your late Mother. If you all were to return I would be happy once again in the company of my daughters and son-in-law and my grandsons, and since Elizabeth has always been enamored of the process of Law she could begin the legal Discovery and then turn it over to a lawyer adept at fixed-asset litigation.

Yes I know the Spanish land has long been a Chimera in our family but indeed it is there and requires much research. If you would begin the process by writing to Sr. Amistad De Lara, Land Commissioner and archivist of the Spanish Colonial Historical Records, Bexar County Courthouse, and be sure you spell your mother’s maiden name correctly, Srta. Maria Luisa Betancort y Real, and the inherited land is
una liga y un labor,
which means, and I hope you remember your Spanish, both grazing land and garden land, which was legally separated from the Mission Concepcion, that is, Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepcion de Acuña (spell it correctly and remember the accents) for Sr. De Lara is a stickler. We have the
casa de dueña
in San Antonio still as it has been continuously occupied by Betancort descendants who are there now, aged as mummies and complaining because they cannot get white bread and must subsist on tortillas.

Your mother’s grandfather, Henri Hipolito Betancort y Goraz, bought the
liga
and the
labor
from the mission but the laws of the Spanish Crown said that all titles had to be registered in Mexico City, a journey of two months at least so it was never registered there and so there are problems with clear title. Not to speak of the fact that after 1821 the Land Registration offices in Mexico City then fell under the Republic of Mexico, notoriously corrupt and I have heard extremely careless with their filing systems. So a shaky title to these lands here came under the Republic of Texas and then the United States and then the Confederacy and now the United States again. There are stacks of moldering papers in Sr. De Lara’s offices. You will love it, Elizabeth. You were born to be an ink-stained wretch, my dear.

I believe the
labor
is on the San Antonio River 5 mi. south of Concepcion and the
liga
is on the Balcones Heights amounting all told to more or less three hundred English acres. The Valenzuela family were running sheep and goats on it but last I heard they had deserted the area.

Kep-dun!

He heard a low sobbing. He bent his head to the paper. He thought Indians never cried. It pulled him away from these legal land questions. It tore his heart.

He closed his eyes and laid down his pen and tried to calm himself. So much had fallen to the old since seven hundred thousand young Southern men were casualties of war. Out of a population of a few million. He must arrange for his family to be together again, he must enter into litigation, he must make a living with his readings, he must deliver this child to her
relatives who would no doubt be utterly appalled by what she had become. For a moment he was completely at a loss as to why he had agreed to take her to Castroville.

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.

As the Captain stepped down from the lectern people came to their feet; some followed him. He shook the hands that were held out to him and accepted thanks and compliments. Everybody smelled like wet wool and camphor and a sneezing small woman said, Thank you, Captain, and shaking her hand gave him a moment’s pleasure, to see her bright cheeks. Perhaps he had taken her away from worry and preoccupation for a short while, what the Captain called the “hard thoughts.” And a man with a grave look and a silver lapel badge in the shape of a shamrock from Hancock’s Second Artillery Corps, Union. The Captain shook his hand firmly. No matter what side you were on, if you had survived Gettysburg you were to be congratulated. Perhaps he had briefly escorted the man’s mind into the lands of the imagination—far places, crisp ice mountains, falling chimney pots, tropical volcanoes.

The manager of the Broadway came to him with the Captain’s share of the money. He had made nearly twenty dollars in good U.S. silver. He wadded the sack of coins into his coat pocket. A man went around putting out the candles in the chandeliers with a long-handled snuffer. Inside the Broadway Playhouse it grew darker and darker.

Captain, said the blond man. He stood up. My name is Almay.

And these are your friends, said Captain Kidd.

They are. The blond man put on his hat.

You followed me from Wichita Falls. I think I saw you at Spanish Fort.

I have business here and there, said Almay. How much do you want for the girl?

Captain Kidd stopped stone cold. For a moment, a long moment, he stood expressionless and utterly still.
I was wrong. Somebody does want her.
He put on his own hat. He settled it carefully on his white hair. He looked down at Almay, several inches shorter. He blinked once, slowly, as he buttoned up his black overcoat. He noted the two Caddos directly behind him.

Almay said, You know the Army don’t patrol the roads here like they do up on the Red. I could catch you on the road and just take her, you know. But I am being a fair and straightforward man with you. How much?

The Captain said, I hadn’t settled on a price.

Or found a buyer.

No. Nor found a buyer.

Well, let’s consider it. I’m not close-fisted. I pay for what I want.

Do you, now?

Captain Kidd had left the .38 back in the hotel room. It was too big to pack around under the three-button frock coat he wore for readings and it was heavy. Perhaps it was best. The feeling that was at present almost overwhelming him would have led him to draw and shoot the man on the spot. And then where would Johanna be when he was in jail?

Yes. Tell me the name of anybody who says otherwise.

I couldn’t be bothered, said Captain Kidd. Of course, I want assurances that the girl will be well treated.

A bit better than what the Indians did to them, said Almay. His lips flattened out into a strange, stiff smile. At least she’ll get paid for it. Blond girls are premium, premium.

Do tell. The Captain nodded amiably. His mind was tearing
ahead like a steam engine into the next hour, the next day. How much ammunition he had, if they knew where he was going, and if they did, if they knew what road he would take.

He said, I tell you what, Almay. Meet me tomorrow morning at the Tyler Stage Roadhouse at about seven. We’ll work out a price. I did not take in much tonight and I am in need of funds.

Good. Almay’s eyelids seemed heavy. He had gray eyes and the thick and colorless skin of people from Scandinavia or Russia. He seemed half asleep or he was dreaming of some other world that was not this world, a place fragmented and without illumination.

THE CAPTAIN TOUCHED
his hat to the U.S. Army sergeant in blue at the door, something not many men would have done, and hurried out. The air was damp; condensation sparkled on every surface and lay in a billion dots on the roof shingles. He saw Almay and the Caddos turn north up Trinity and in the opposite direction from his little hotel on Stemmons Ferry Road.

He walked fast through the unpaved streets to Gannet’s Livery and called out to the oafish stableman, harnessed the roan mare and then backed her into the shafts, settled the collar, hooked up the trace chains, turned the wagon facing out. He changed clothes as fast as he had ever changed in his life. Into the wagon he threw his portfolio and the bag of coins, and wrapped up the remains of their supper in the frying pan. He put his formal black reading clothes and coat over his arm. He stroked Pasha’s neck, wiped the flyspecks out of his eyes, and then tied him on behind. He left the tin pail for the man to return to the cookshop.