Paulette Jiles - News of the World

The Captain’s shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch under his black formal coat. He was suddenly almost overwhelmed with pity for her. Torn from her parents, adopted by a strange culture, given new parents, then sold for a few blankets and some old silverware, now sent to stranger after stranger, crushed into peculiar clothing, surrounded by people of an unknown language and an unknown culture, only ten years old, and now she could not even eat her food without having to use outlandish instruments.

Finally he took his satchel in one hand, tucked his portfolio under his arm, and beckoned to Johanna. He saw her look down at her stained hands and there were tears on her cheeks.

We’re going to try to get you into a hotel room, he said in a firm voice. And you are going to have to stay there without breaking out the windows while I prepare my reading.

He took hold of her greasy small hand and they started off down the street.

THE CAPTAIN WENT out and locked the hotel room door behind him. He stood in the hallway. He could hear her begin a Kiowa chant. This could mean anything. It could mean she was resigned, it could mean she was going to hang herself with the curtain cording, or set the place on fire, or go to sleep.

At least she didn’t have a weapon.

At the desk he laid down the key and said, She was a Kiowa captive. I am returning her.

But Captain! You’d think she’d be happy! The young man at the desk had protuberant eyes and in his hands was a false mustache. He was shaping it with a pair of nail scissors. You’d think she’d be skipping about and clapping her hands! That sounds like she is about to stab herself! It’s operatic!

I know, said the Captain.

Where is she going?

To near San Antonio.

You mean you are putting up with that all the way to San Antonio? Perish and forbid!

Young man, stop speaking in exclamation points. I have no idea what to do about it.

The desk clerk breathed out, long and carefully, with his eyes closed. He often played bit parts at the playhouse, usually a page or a messenger. He said, Go get Mrs. Gannet to stay with her. We can’t listen to this all night.

THE CAPTAIN SAW that Mrs. Gannet had quite a lot of rich brown hair knotted in complex braids coiled all around her head. She had taken off her bonnet to beat it on a stall rail to knock the dust off. She was instructing the stableman in a method of removing Chicago screws from a bridle.

Yes ma’am! he said, and turned and crossed one leg over another and fell down. Well Billy be-goddamn bangtree, he said. Legs, floor, unexpected. His words were slurred.

Peter, she said. You are swearing. Get up.

Things! he said. Under hay. Trip a person.

Well then, pick them up, she said, gently. Yes, Captain? She tried to smile.

The Captain stood formally with his hands crossed in front of him. He asked her to come and stay the night with Johanna but did not, of course, mention the other reason, which was that it would be delightful, yes, enchanting to think of her sleeping in the room next to his. He offered her a dollar to compensate.

Captain, please, she said. I am delighted to help.

That evening was the first time in the last week he could, he hoped, rest without cares, without tension and fear. Fear that the girl would run away and be lost and die of hunger, would try to swim the Red to get back to her Kiowa family. For the first two days he had wondered if she might attempt to kill him. Or herself.

Mrs. Gannet had come prepared to spend the entire night with her nightgown and other articles in a small brass-clasped thing that looked like a green fabric saddlebag. He opened the door to the room where Johanna sat on the floor cross-legged, rocking herself. Mrs. Gannet drew a light and delicate piece of divinity from her jacket pocket and held it out. Johanna fixed her blank stare on it. The Captain saw her make the sign for “poison.”

He said, Eat half of it, Mrs. Gannet.

She understood immediately and bit half of the white candy and said, Mmmmm!

Johanna reached up and took the other half from her in a glacially slow movement and bit down on the taste of vanilla and sugar and egg white, felt the light crinkling of divinity shell in her mouth. She ate it unsmiling. The Captain knew Mrs. Gannet had made it that afternoon, for Johanna. Divinity was very difficult to make. He backed out slowly and heard the lock click to.

The walls of the hotel were made of cheap deal board and he could hear everything from the room next door and wished he could not. He sat down to outline his articles in ink, his pen nib scratching across the rough newsprint with a noise like avaricious mice. He blew on the ink and then laid the newspapers aside and took up the letter paper to write to his daughters in Georgia. The room smelled of new, raw lumber and the harsh soap they had used to wash the quilts and sheets.

My dearest daughters Olympia and Elizabeth, he wrote.

Kep-dun! Johanna banged on the wall. She was sobbing.

He banged back. Cho-henna, he said.

My greetings and constant love to Emory and my grandchildren. I am well and continue to make my rounds with the news of the day and as always am well-received in the towns of which we have more than a few now as the Century grows older and the population increases so that large crowds come to hear reportage of distant places as well as those nearby. I enjoy good health as always and hope that Emory is doing well using his left hand now and look forward to an example of his handwriting. It is true what Elizabeth has said about employment for a one-armed man but that concerns manual labor only and at any rate there should be some consideration for a man who has lost a limb in the war. As soon as he is adept with his left I am sure he will consider Typesetting, Accounting, Etc. & Etc. Olympia is I am sure a steady rock to you all.

Olympia’s husband, Mason, had been killed at Adairsville, during Johnston’s retreat toward Atlanta. The man was too big to be a human being and too small to be a locomotive. He had been shot out of the tower of the Bardsley mansion and when he fell three stories and struck the ground he probably made a hole big enough to bury a hog in. The Captain’s younger daughter, Olympia, was in reality a woman who affected helplessness and refinement and had never been able to pull a turnip from the garden without weeping over the poor, dear thing. She fluttered and gasped and incessantly tried to demonstrate how sensitive she was. Mason was a perfect foil and then the Yankees went and killed him.

Olympia was now living with Elizabeth and Emory in the remains of their farm in New Hope Church, Georgia, and was quite likely a heavy weight. He put one hand to his forehead. My youngest daughter is in reality a bore.

There was a pounding on the wall: Kep-dun! Kep-dun!

He got up and pounded back. Cho-henna! he said. Go to sleep!

The Captain heard a soothing voice on the other side of the wall. The way one spoke to restless horses: firm, low-voiced. Commands that were somehow gentle. Earlier he had heard Mrs. Gannet and the girl going down the hall to the bathroom. A small shriek of fear as the toilet flushed. You could hear everything in this hotel. He wished he had spent more money and had taken rooms in one of the big stone hotels where one’s privacy was assured.

. . . your husbands having been both of old Georgia State regiments would be true to their comrades and so it was fate and the Will of the Almighty had led you all to go back to Georgia to fight in the War and thus into the heart of the Burning but considering what has occurred to other families we return thanks for our dear ones who are still with us. I know travel is extremely difficult at present but once you are here things will be better.